


Eric Cartman Is A Fuckin' Fatass And He Always Will Be

by snackysmores



Category: South Park
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Angst and Humor, M/M, Robbery, lewd behavior
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-23
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2018-02-05 20:40:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 78,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1831546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snackysmores/pseuds/snackysmores
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Eric Cartman Is A Fuckin' Fatass And He Always Will Be" is a story about how Eric Cartman is a fucking fatass and he always will be. For whatever reason, Kenny and Butters have stuck by him through the years, but Stan and Kyle left them behind. Working minimum wage, drowning in student debt; he and the new gang need money if they ever want to move out of their parents' respective houses. Things have been going well, but it seems like no matter how much they steal, it's never enough for Cartman. He wants more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [Comments greatly appreciated!]

"Okay, this is a stickup! Put all the money in the bag or I'll fucking kill each and every one of you!"

Two men had barged into a bank in Lakewood Colorado on a mild afternoon in July. Both of slender builds and of average height; outfitted in sneakers, blue and orange tracksuits, rubber rabbit masks, and glock 9s held in gloved hands. The one in blue that was shouting vulgarities had a voice one of the bank tellers would describe as 'very fay with a country twang', while the one in orange thrusting a black duffel bag at the teller had a voice that was 'gravelly, like a smoker' as he rasped out: "You step any closer to the counter or handle anything but the money I'll blow you away." 

They brandished their weapons and kept their fingers on the triggers, making the hapless customers and employees duck for cover. The cowardly guard on duty had hidden out of sight, and when the two robbers ran out carrying the bag by one handle each between them, he shot the one in blue in the back; making him slump against his partner who helped him to the sidewalk where a white unmarked van was screeching to a stop. The driver was wearing a red tracksuit and rubber frog mask. He had the window down and aimed his gun out the window which was enough to make the guard duck for cover. The shots he was expecting never came; instead hearing tires peeling out on the road with the van being loaded and closed before making a getaway. The guard awkwardly ran down the stairs and out onto the street, firing at the vehicle but not hitting it once. The vehicle, stolen from a construction yard, was later found on the outskirts of town parked out of sight from the road.

The blonde bunny had his mask, blue track jacket, and now useless bullet-proof vest removed and left on the floor of the green station wagon they had changed over to; sobbing noisily and uncontrollably, laying on his stomach in the backseat, unable to see the massive bruise on his back. The other blonde bunny had removed his mask and was holding an ice pack to the crybaby's back even as he hiccuped and squealed.

The frog was unmasking himself to reveal the slimy brunette underneath, asking, "How much did you get?" The blonde in the orange jumpsuit seethed, "I don't give a fuck how much money we got, you fat asshole. Butters got shot." Cartman scoffed, "Whose fucking fault is that? I told you they had one guard and you didn't put him in his place...Is Butters okay though?"

"I-I'm okay Eric, I appreciate your concern, really I do...I think we got about seven thousand dollars this time..." each of the boys ran the math and it wasn't a great takeaway for the three of them considering the time and stress that came with pulling off the job. "Oww...!" Butters winced, going slack. "Fellas, I don't think I can do this anymore. It's too dangerous, and I feel like a real somethin' or other frightenin' all those poor people." The company was quiet, Kenny rolling down the passenger side window to have a smoke.

Eric cleared his throat and turned on the radio, "Ahem, well...Don't be too hasty now, Butters. It's really not so dangerous if we can avoid those kinds of simple slip ups. Think it over, won't you?" Butters grumbled, face buried in the carseat, "I guess I'll think about it some more. I know you two would be a man short without me...And I know we all need the money." No one had anything to add to that, brains stewing thinking of their circumstances. They were all still stuck living in South Park with their respective parents, trudging by working off college debt in entry-level positions. Butter's Fashion Design major got him into clothing retail, Kenny's Mechanical Engineering major got him a job at a car garage, and Political Science major Eric Cartman was working at a Taco Bell.

By the time they got back to South Park, Kenny had smoked through his full pack of cigarettes and Eric was late for work; hastily changing behind the building in the back of the car, uncaring if his associates chose to look or not. He wan't much to look at, there was just a lot of him. Kenny walked around to the driver side of the station wagon and slid into the seat just as Eric was putting on his nametag and cap. 

"You don't need to tell me, I know the drill." Kenny halted Eric as he looked ready to bluster with commands, "Clean the bills, dispose of the evidence, yadda yadda yadda. I'll pick you up when your shift ends. Just have some tacos ready for me, alright?" Cartman huffed, checking his phone for texts from his pissed off manager, "Take Butters to my place to rest. If his parents catch him while he's limping with that shiner he'll get grounded." Butters whined finding he still couldn't move much without hurting, and he didn't want to get grounded. Twenty-two years old or not, 'as long as you're living under this roof young man...' he could get grounded.

"I'll get him tucked in." Kenny grinned and with the palm of his left hand up he curled his index finger back at Eric as he was walking away to beckon, "Hey, come back here."

"What!? I'm already late!" Eric glared, stomping over and leaning down, planting his hands on the car door.

"...Gimme a kiss." Kenny winked and leaned out the window, tilting his chin up expectantly. "Fff-," Cartman was ready to curse him out for being an asshole that was going to get him fired, but he leaned down and stuck his lips to Kenny's for a full second, a wet smack sounding as they pulled away. "Stop smoking those fucking flavored cigarettes, you taste like a goth kid." Eric was still flustered, but he had destressed somewhat, curves wobbling as he jogged to the back door of the restaurant. 

"Do you always come when people finger you?" Kenny shouted after Cartman, referring to the 'come hither' gesture he'd made to get Eric back to the car before. Cartman flipped him off and was gone to another day of wage slavery. Kenny chuckled and pulled away, driving toward his friend's place. Butters was awfully quiet and seeming to want to say something, slowly and gently kicking his feet against the car door. "You and Cartman...? Again?"

Kenny glanced in the rear view at Butters, "I just thought he needed a little pick me up. We're not seeing each other right now. I could ask the same of you though, you spent the night at his house last weekend, right?" Butters nervously threaded his fingers together and twiddled his thumbs. "Uh, well, sorta...But, it's not serious. And if my date goes well this weekend, that'll be the last of it."

"Congratulations, Butters. Who got so lucky?" The pair of friends had woven a number of complicated relationships, but Cartman was mostly dependent on the mercy and libido of the two promiscuous blondes he kept company with. Nothing 'serious' ever worked with the fatass. If he wasn't being selfish and taking you for granted, he was possessive and controlling. Butters and Kenny themselves had a past, but even if they were compatible, nothing clicked enough to make them commit. If they were both lonely and Eric was being a dickhead, they'd meet up to go clubbing or mutually masturbate to internet porn. Bonding over hardcore skin flicks and crossdressing they felt at liberty to discuss anything with each other.

"We've been penpals for a long time, ever since we met at that camp, the one my hypocrite dad sent me to so I could 'pray the gay away'? His name's Bradley, and he was my accountabilibuddy. I told him I was bi-curious before I even knew what it meant. He'd get awfully sad and lonely so I've always tried to stay in touch, because that's what accountabilibuddies do." Butters drums his feet against the door faster with some embarrassment, "He said he had a crush on me! All this time and I guess it took him saying it outright for me to notice. I can be a real dummy like that. But he's gonna drive down and take me on a date!" Butters tried to see Kenny's reaction and winced forgetting the palm-sized bruise on his back keeping him lying down.

"That's really great Butters, I'm glad for you. You boys use protection, mmkay?" Kenny smiled mockingly imitating their old counselor and sex ed teacher as Butters protested. In the back of their minds both of them knew Cartman would be anything but supportive when the news got to him. The unhappy pig in question was just calling out another order from behind the counter in Taco Bell. His manager gave him shit and put him on the line, saying 'one more strike and you're out, buster'. So, when 'they' entered the restaraunt, Cartman struggled to hold in a sigh of contempt. 'They' being Clyde, Bebe, Craig, Token, and Wendy. As far as Eric could tell they came in just to fuck with him.

"Welcome to Taco Bell, Clyde. The usual?" Cartman did his best to compose himself. He needed the job to front for him, to keep his mom off his back. Clyde briefly looked quite satisfied to be regarded as a regular customer with a 'usual', but Bebe hanging off his arm elbowed him in the side. "Oh, uhh...No, I'll haaave...Three cheesaritos, one volcano taco with extra lava sauce, two nacho dorito tacos, and two medium drinks." Cartman started ringing up orders, quietly fuming as each of the group in line slid in a 'secret menu' item that every hipster had learned about thanks to the internet. 

"Next!" Token, with Wendy at his side, both mused over the menu for awhile. They had on matching purple sweaters and he silently prayed for them to suffer painful deaths. "I don't know...What do you want, Wendy?" They both hemmed and hawed, which always pissed off Cartman. You ought to know what you want to order by the time you get to the counter. "We'll have a churro, two medium drinks, a gordita supreme, the salad..."

"Why would you get a salad at a taco bell." It just came out of Cartman on reflex. He stood by it, but he immediately regretted saying it, he was just inviting more trouble. "Gee, I don't know Eric, I'm sure getting a salad anywhere must be pretty outlandish for you to consider but I happen to be conscious of what I put in my body." Cartman had a particularly racist comment stabbing at the back of his brain to reply with, but was still managing to maintain and collect the money for their order. "Next!" he sounded again, increasingly exasperated as they tittered in amusement at Cartman's uniform and his overall status serving them fast food and living with his mom. Craig looked stoned out of his gourd and hadn't said a word, eyes narrowed focusing on the menu. "...Craig, what do you want!"

Craig flipped him off and didn't take his eyes off the bright and colorful menus. "Three crunchwrap supremes and a medium drink." Cartman sighed, at least Craig was concise. "Thank you, your number is 107, and your order will be out soon." As usual they milled about instead of sitting down, keeping an eye on him and the other poor soul on duty as they quickly banged out the food orders.

"105, 106, 107." Cartman put out the trays and folded his arms as the group descended to pick apart their orders for imperfections.

"There's chicken in my salad, you know I don't eat meat!" Wendy cried.  
"I said no sour cream...!" Craig groaned.  
"There's not nearly enough lava sauce on this taco." Clyde bristled.

"Wendy, the chicken salad comes with chicken! Clyde, that's double the normal amount of lava sauce. And Craig, you did not say no sour cream!" Cartman hissed.

The mob rabbled and the manager waddled over just in time. "Is there a problem here?" Cartman fumed and took the orders away, "No! Just...Refiring these orders!" The manager apologized and the more sadistic members of Craig's gang took glee in berating Eric for his performance to his employer before he went back to his office, allowing them to lean expectantly over the counter watching Cartman sweat, unable to do anything but submit. 

"105! 106! 107!" Cartman had viciously reassembled the offending items and slapped them back on the counters for re-inspection. 

"You didn't even change your gloves, you handled meat with those!" Wendy cried again. "Can I just get like, an extra container of lava sauce?" Clyde sighed. "Hey, I didn't order crunchwraps, I ordered chalupas..." Craig mistook in his red-eyed haze.

"I totally changed my gloves!" Cartman blustered, "Just take your salad, you hippy! Craig, you ordered crunchwraps, like you always do! Clyde! Take your lava sauce and get the fuck out!" Eric tossed extra sauce in a little plastic container in Clyde's bag and herded their orders together trying to shoo the party away.

"Cartman...! In my office!" The manager bellowed and Wendy put on a smug grin, Cartman visibly tensing and clenching every muscle in his body not to grab the nearest person and shove their face into a grill press.

"You show up late, you've got a bad attitude, you take home way too much product, and you regularly berate customers!" The mustachioed ginger manager sighed and shook his head. Cartman did a poor job of defending his bad attitude, crying, "I do not, it's just those assholes! They only come in here to fuck with me!" His boss threw up his hands, "Eric, I've had enough. You're a toxic asset to my branch, and you're fired."

"Fuck taco bell anyway, it gives me the shits!" Cartman screamed; threw his hat at the wall and ripped off his shirt. He barreled through the kitchen bare chested flipping off Craig's gang still in the restaurant, shoveling some warm 98 cent burritos into a bag and stormed out of the building hardly 90 minutes into his shift. Waiting for a ride was more degrading than marching through the elements without a shirt over his fat gut, and so he goose stepped all the way home. Halfway through the trip Token's escalade zoomed by and they threw a baja blast at the back of his head. 

"God. Damnit!"  
Life had utterly shit on Eric Cartman as far as he was concerned. God had forsaken him, and shined upon those who least deserved it; Like those two assholes that had ditched him and Kenny after high school. That backstabbing ginger jersey jew and his hippy super best boyfriend. He hadn't thought about them in a long time and it did nothing to assuage the hatred he felt for everyone he knew from school except for Kenny and Butters. Even they weren't his 'best friends'. They got along better without him. He had no one. It was just like Kenny said in his will: 'You have no ability to feel, and you are going to die alone and miserable.'

He felt plenty, but never the right thing. He was never in harmony with his surroundings or his peers. He was content to be by himself wasting time on his computer until the night came and he was left alone in the dark, grown out of sleeping with his stuffed toys but longing for something to hold on to. His hair felt sticky and disgusting and the feeling permeated through his very being. When he threw open the door of his home and saw Kenny giving Butters a massage on the couch he could only heave with a heavy sigh.

"Hey, welcome back." Kenny offered, "Wet, shirtless, and carrying food is a good look for you. But what are you doing back so soon?" Cartman tossed the cold fast food at Kenny and made for the stairs, kicking off his boots and what remained of his clothes as he went. "That vindictive slut Wendy and her shitty friends got me fired again. I'm going to take a shower."

"You want some company...? I don't get a hot shower often enough..." Kenny teased but Eric replied in ill humor, "No, thank you!" The bathroom door upstairs was flung open, the ventilation fan and shower running in short order. Butters frowned, "M-Maybe I should wait to tell him...He must be feelin' awful sore already about losin' his job and all..." Kenny ruffled Butter's short and styled blonde hair, growing back from his brief experiment with a mohawk that got him grounded. "You leave that chubby grump to me, Butters." Kenny stripped in the living room and marched confidently upstairs in the buff. No one turned him down. Especially not someone as hard up for attention as Eric Cartman.

"Are you sure you don't want some company?" Kenny Mccormick raised his voice above the din of the running shower water and the air ventilation in the bathroom. Eric was the type to need some alone time once he was angry. The last thing to do was tell him to 'calm down', that really pissed him off. But once the edge was off he'd want to have someone to gripe to. Kenny wasn't always able to be around his friends, spending a good deal of his time between lives stuck in Satan's own private estate 'entertaining' his son Damien Thorn, but being with his friends made him very happy. 

Life was charming when they were around, going on adventures that kept him out of the house. He thought that kind of bond would give him the privilege to see his friends grow up even if his lifespan would extend far beyond theirs. However, after dying of alchohol poisoning on his 21st birthday, when he returned to Earth he learned that Stan and Kyle had left town together. He talked to them on the phone now and then and briefly met up over holidays, but they were always 'busy' and distant. He missed them. He knew Cartman missed them too. Why did Stan and Kyle have to 'break up' the group to be together?

"Just get the fuck in here and wash off that cigarette stank," Eric sighed. Kenny peeled aside the shower curtain and stepped in between Eric and the showerhead, confronting him with a friendly smile, picking up a bar of soap to rub over the stocky male's torso. Thick limbs, a big belly, he was like a pink and cuddly teddy bear with an unhappy frown that did little to abate his cuteness. Eric's eyes darted about self-consciously, anywhere but at Kenny. That vision of toned aryan-elder god hunkiness had taken both of his virginities on a certain special occasion one year ago, the only birthday present the poor boy could afford was a stack of hand-written 'coupons' for sexual favors that smacked of a joke until Cartman came to redeem them.

Kenny was much too easygoing about sex as far as Cartman was concerned, even if he had reaped the benefits of that attitude himself. The blonde was teasingly soaping around his backside and between his legs, taking liberties squeezing handfuls of his curvy body. "You'll get another job." Kenny assured him, casually polishing Eric's erection in his hand and passing off the soap. "Where? When? What's the point..." Cartman dragged the soap over Kenny. He really did dislike the smell of smoke. It reminded him of his mother taking johns in her bedroom, each session ending with the click of a lighter and the smell of tobacco, or worse, crack cocaine. Liane tried so hard to compensate acting like a model loving mother, but his friends were only too keen on reminding him that his mother was a crack whore and German porn star. 

"Just leave that to me." Kenny smiled down at him and Cartman felt ill because he thought he knew that smile. It was just like his mother. He'd use his body to convince someone to give poor Eric Cartman a living wage. He thought he was his guardian angel..."Where." Cartman asserted again. "I don't know...I think Tweek Bros. could be hiring?" Eric guffawed, "Tweek!?" surely that jittery tweaker had no sex drive to speak of, it'd be too much pressure wouldn't it? "Sure. I throw some oxy his way, put in a good word, I bet he'd give you a chance." Cartman let out an 'oh' with his eyes on Kenny's collar bone. His jealous heart had got him in too much trouble with the dirty blonde in the past. Kenny's primary sources of income were fixing cars, sexual favors, and selling drugs. He did it to pay off his debts, but more important for him was paying toward his sister's education and when money was tight he'd crawl through any muck to keep Karen in school and in campus housing.

Cartman was busy thinking about Kenny still. Did he think he was doing him a favor showing him affection? That nebulous feeling of being together but not together filled him with loathing. "You really are in a bad mood...!" Kenny mused, Eric's member softening in his slick hold. "I'm not in any mood." Eric sighs and leans against his friend for support letting the hot water wash over them, putting away the soap. "I'm so fucking sick of this town Kenny, I need to get out of here. One more job, we could afford a place together. The three of us. Anything is better than this. I'd eat pop tarts for dinner every night if I had to." Kenny quietly felt through Eric's cleaned hair. It would be up to Butters to tell him, but the fatass's plan had a few problems. "We have to be careful, Eric. If we get caught we'll lose everything. No rushing plans. Nothing out of our league."

"Pussy." Cartman spat. They'd never gotten more than ten grand before. They'd never had to shoot anyone. When the trio of amateurs first managed to knock over a liquor store for a measly three grand and some handles of vodka they felt invincible. Cartman was always thinking bigger, but it was simply outside of their means. With Butters quitting...Robbing even a convenience store would be dicey. "I could get away with stealing anything. I could get away with murder." Cartman looked up with ice in his stare, self-assured. "Anything, huh?" Kenny challenged and his mouth was caught by Cartman's, thick fingers digging in his blonde hair tugging him down to mash their lips together, petulantly stealing a kiss. "Anything." Cartman assures him.

"That's a can-do attitude if I've heard one. Just remember that for your job interview." Kenny gently made space for himself with a hand on Cartman's chest, using the other male's shampoo and conditioner. Cartman's chest ached, knowing he couldn't steal what he wanted most, it was something that had to be given freely. Why did Kenny kiss him and fool around with him at all? It just left him wanting something better for himself, something he felt like he didn't deserve. "I'm getting out." Cartman announced and stepped from the shower to towel himself off. "Don't stay up late tonight, I guarantee a job interview in the morning." The fat boy sighed drying off his hair in front of the mirror, "And if you don't?" Kenny poked his head out of the shower, "Then I'll wake you up in the morning with a stack of pancakes and a sloppy blowjob." Cartman turned to hide the piqued interest of his cock, but Kenny saw it in the mirror. "I thought that might excite you. You do love pancakes." Eric laughed in spite of himself and strode out of the bathroom to his bedroom to change. Kenny did a lot for him. He could do more for Kenny, if he'd give him another chance...

Once he had on a clean change of clothes and flopped into bed he felt no drive to get back up again, so he didn't. Part of him waited for Kenny to come to his room dripping hot out of the shower, that would be just like him...But he never did. Out of the shower he dressed and headed downstairs to leave. "Sorry Butters, you're on your own. I've got to go get some hot coffee..." Butters stammered and tried to sit up, wincing and flopping back down, "Huh? W-Wait...! Oww..." The poor boy waited anxiously for Eric to come stomping down from his room but as time passed he wound up falling asleep. 

Kenny called up Tweek and met him at his place. He'd been selling him and Craig drugs for a while now, usually just weed and pills. But since a year ago the two weren't speaking and he would meet them for separate deals. Tweek was very particular about how Kenny made the dropoff. He was to park down the street and not say anything incriminating on the phone. Once he was there he had to take off his shoes and wait until they were in Tweek's room to make a transaction. As far as client-dealer relationships went Kenny appreciated Tweek's thoroughness in keeping business discreet for him and tried to keep the process as stress free as possible for him, which included showing up exactly on time. Kenny greeted Tweek with a friendly smile at the door, "Is that coffee I smell? I could sure use a cup..." 

"C-Come in, please! Gh!" Tweek was host to an encyclopedia worth of nervous tics. Chewing his lip, the inside of his cheek, his nails. Buttoning and unbuttoning his shirt, there was a wide range of unpredictable spasms he exhibited as well: cricking his neck, twitching his eye, suddenly grimacing and making outbursts of panicked sound. He had been a stark contrast to Craig who exerted as little energy as possible in his movements and kept a flat expression on his face, speaking in slow and even monotones when he was at ease. Kenny had tried to ask once why the two weren't hanging out but it was obviously very distressing for Tweek and he dropped it.  
Following the blonde to the kitchen to collect two mugs of the family blend he continued trailing back to his room. There was an old cockatiel in a cage, a computer on a desk with many stress relieving toys around it, a stereo and collection of music, art supplies and Tweek's own paintings on the wall. The style was something unique to Tweek's twitching hand and maybe it wouldn't hang in a gallery, but Kenny thought it had a beautifully human element to it. It was an outlet for his stress and anxiety and even paintings of placid lakes looked shaken and complex with quirky color schemes. The thought of recordings of Bob Ross trying to calm Tweek down with his soothing words and even brush strokes warmed his heart.

"Usually I call you..! I-Is there something wrong!?" Tweek sat on his bed and drank his coffee, taking some solace in that feeling of warmth in his chest. "Nothing's wrong at all with me. How are you, Tweek? We haven't hung out in awhile." The jittery male tried to shake his suspicions and paranoia as Kenny put him at ease by speaking softly. "I'm...I'm okay, I guess. Work's been really stressful! Java got sick last week too! B-But I think she's okay now..." Tweek looked with concern at his pretty, resting cockatiel. It was a very affectionate bird with a nice voice and caring for it was very therapeutic. Cats were bad luck and dogs were far too startling with the way they barked. He didn't think he'd take to caring for a bird either, but it had worked out really well for him. "I-I don't have a lot of money to burn after taking her to get checked up and buying medicine...So, I don't think I can buy from you right now, I'm sorry!" Tweek froze up worrying Kenny might get mad, but he remained just as pleasant, "That's ok. Would you like something anyway? You seem a little high-strung." Tweek bit his lip, he was considering it. Something to take his mind off things...Though he'd need company or he'd risk being stuck alone with troubling thoughts. "Gh! Well, if you're offering...A little pot?"

Kenny nodded along with all of Tweek's stipulations and they each had a smoke out of his one-hitter in Tweek's room, exhaling smoke out the window that was facing away from the street or other houses. Half an hour later Tweek felt like he was melting in bed listening to music, talking to Kenny who busied himself giving Tweek a scalp massage. "Why are you being nice to me Kenny?" Kenny tilted his head, looking at him upside down knelt above him slowly rubbing Tweek's temples. "I'm nice to everyone, Tweek. Though I had a favor to ask...If you could give Cartman a job interview?" Tweek groaned, some of his jitter rising to the surface of his currently doped demeanor, "C-Cartman? But he's an asshole...!" 

Kenny chuckled and could scarcely deny it, "I promise, he'll be on his very best behavior. You said work's been stressful, so he could lighten your load. Talk to the customers. Scare the troublesome ones away." Tweek hmmed, his opinions made malleable under Kenny's warm attention. "I guess I can give him a chance. Uhm, are you going to leave now because I said yes?" Kenny shook his head, "I don't have anywhere to go. Just tell me when you want me to leave." Tweek mumbled, fidgeting with the buttons of his shirt. "But what if I want you to stay longer than you want to stay?" Kenny chuckled and stroked down to the back of Tweek's neck making him shiver, "I'll stay all night if that's what you want." Tweek's face scrunched up in distress and he bit his lip, chest rising and falling. "I-I'd like that...I feel safe having someone there..." Kenny slowly dipped down and planted his lips on Tweek's upside down. The tenseness melted away again, "I know what you mean. I think everyone deserves to feel safe and happy." 

 

When Butters blinked awake the tv was on and Cartman was sitting in front of him on the floor. "E-Eric! Do you want to sit on the couch, too? I'm sorry fer hoggin' it!" The chubby male grunted and affirmed 'why not, it's my couch after all', picking up Butter's legs and setting them down again over his lap. They sat in silence awhile until Eric spontaneously pulled off the ankle sock from Butter's left foot. "H-Hey! What are you doing?" Eric scoffed, gripping the foot in his hand and looking at his colorful toenails in light blue, "I thought so. Nail polish again. You're going to get yourself grounded." his rough digits digged over the skin and Butters sighed, wilting over the couch again. "I can keep a secret. My parents pretend I don't exist most days anyway until they need to justify their marriage." Eric had a firm touch, but that was good for a massage too; selling clothes and robbing banks was just killing the poor blonde's feet.

They were quiet again, just watching tv. "Did you decide...?" Cartman braced himself. Butter buried his face in the crook of his arm. "I'm sorry, Eric. I could have died today." Eric surprised him by responding after a sigh, "I understand." the world couldn't bear to lose someone as sweet as Butters. He was too soft for 'the life' too. Eric spread across the couch behind Butters, looping an arm over him. Just cuddling on the couch was nice. Eric was always extremely warm, which is a valuable asset for cuddling. However, cuddling with him typically led somewhere, and when those pudgy fingers strayed Butters caught him. "Uhm...I-I can't." was all he squeaked out. Eric was silent. He heaved another sigh and sat upright. "I understand..." he uttered again, defeated. He didn't even have to hear there was someone else.

"I'm going to bed." He slogged upstairs and Butters was left bewildered, not expecting that reaction. Seeing him sad made him want to comfort him but...That wouldn't be fair to Bradley, or to Cartman. Unlike Kenny he thought that no strings attached spontaneous shows of affection would do more harm than good. He meekly called out goodnight to the retreating man of the house and clicked off the TV. Eric sunk into his bed upstairs and stared at the ceiling, feeling too bitter to even jerk off. He just wanted to sleep and dream of something better for himself. He tossed and turned and eventually fell asleep, leg thrown up over one pillow with another clutched between his arms. 

 

 

Stout-Bodied Eric Cartman's wheezing breaths felt like plasma burning from his lungs gushing out into the frigid air in pales of white as he trudged through the snow one foot at a time. The sound of police sirens echoed somewhere in the foggy snowfall. He could be heading right for the cops in pursuit, but he had to keep moving. His back felt hot and sticky, Kenny's blood soaking through his coat as he carried him on his back. The job had gone south fast and the hick security was only too glad to try and gun a man down. Kenny passed off the money to Butters and assured him the wound was a through and through. In the meantime, he was to take the money and run while Eric got Kenny to safety. "When'd you get so strong..." Kenny nuzzles the back of Eric's neck in a delirium, smearing blood from his lips. Cartman could scarcely choke out the words to tell Kenny to shut the fuck up. Kenny fed whispers against Eric's ear, "You can put me down anywhere. No one will remember me...I shouldn't have to be the one to tell you to save yourself." 

Cartman growled as he stumbled through the snow piling in up to his shins. "You don't have to die, either!" He knew Kenny could resurrect by now, but he never knew how long he'd be gone. "What am I supposed to do when you're not here...?" Kenny hung his forehead over Cartman's broad shoulder, "You'll miss me, huh...?". Cartman hissed and lurched forward hearing that familiar question; something Kenny liked to ask in the suicidal manias of his younger years. Cartman just had to find somewhere more dry and he could try to patch Kenny up himself. How hard could it be? He'd paid a lot of attention in biology class, though carving up frogs and cats made him a bit queasy and he had to sit out with Stan; Kyle and Kenny ripping on them after school. 'It's just meat. Not even living meat. There's nothing special about it.' That was Kenny's attitude. He seemed to regard even his living bodies with the same reverence as stray cadavers. 

"Yes! I'll miss you!" Eric barked, "Making stupid jokes, sneaking into my bed at night, telling me I look good, mooching my food and randomly licking my face like a dog...No one can replace you! If you didn't come back, I'd kill myself!" Kenny gave a frail squeeze around Eric, "Thanks, Cartman." Even if everyone else abandoned him, Kenny would be there for him. Eric didn't deserve to die alone and miserable. Kenny would be one day; he'd be that way many days after when those he cared about most all passed, and he wouldn't wish it on anyone.

"Once I find somewhere to put you down I'm going to shove my hand into your greasy guts, dig out that bullet between all the half-digested poptarts, and you'll be fine! That's the way it's got to be. We both know you can't afford health care, you poor bastard...!" The hot lump weighing him down started to cool. "Didn't you hear me? I said you're a poor bastard, you son of a bitch! Kenny!" Eric dropped to his knees with a corpse slumped on top of him as he cried into the snow.

 

Cartman called out Kenny's name hoarsely as he awoke in his bed with hot tears in his eyes. He didn't smell pancakes, so he must have that job at Tweek Bros to go to. He didn't smell any breakfast at all, so Butters and Liane weren't at the house either. May as well get coffee and baked goods at work. He wiped his eyes on his forearm and felt pissed off for getting weepy over one Kenny's death. Why did he bother remembering them at all? 

He dressed conservatively in brown slacks and a white button-up, just going through the motions and trying not to imagine Kenny naked on his bed telling him how 'handsome' he looked in his Sunday best. He wondered what brought him to relive that time in his dream as he schlepped downstairs to the garage to take the car. Kenny was gone a good three months after that death, everyone but him seemingly oblivious as to his absence, making it that much harder to 'miss' him because Cartman couldn't tell anyone what was really making him so surly. Kenny wasn't on the lam and hiding out in Mexico, he was burning in hell for being a dirty heathen begat by forbidden esoteric rituals.

What was disconcerting was how much Kenny talked up hell. He said Cartman would like it. He'd show him the hotspots and they'd stay in Satan's 'Summer Home'. Cartman realized that once he was dead and in hell, Kenny would still be popping in and out of his life after death due to his rebirths, left with no concept of time, and hanging out with Adolf Hitler would only be entertaining for so long even if Kenny assured him they'd get along famously. Cartman got uneasy thinking about dying, thinking about getting old. He hated old people. Smelly, sexless, feeble-minded, just taking up space trying to convince everyone else their time was better than the present. What the fuck was the point of existing on any plane?

Cartman let out a shaky breath parking on the street in front of Tweek Bros. His thoughts were getting decidedly too emo for his taste, but that's what happened when he got pent up like this. He felt like he could go on a rampage of sex and violence. Had to reel it in. Act like a human being instead of a heartless monster. If Kenny could pull it off, so could he. Tweek snapped alert as the bell above the door chimed, Cartman noticing Kenny sitting in a booth with a mug and a bag of baked goods; wearing his blue jumpsuit and a coquettish smile that made Eric's eyes roll.

"Right, where's my apron." Cartman slapped a hand on the counter and Tweek jumped, "B-But, you're supposed to go through the interview proce--" Cartman groaned, "Fuck job interviews! Start showing me how to make that foofy shit the girls will be asking for." Tweek yelped and Kenny held in a chuckle that was still audible in the quiet coffee house. Cartman was on 'trial' as a barista and once he had some caffeine in his system he was quickly taking to all of the knowledge Tweek had to offer. "G-Gah! Oh god, the morning rush is coming!" Tweek seized up when his eyes flashed over his wrist watch, eyes going wide when Eric slapped him on the back. "Sit the fuck down Tweek, I got this." Tweek stammered protests but Cartman shoved him out of his own workspace and the jittery boy awkwardly sat across from Kenny, keeping an eye on Cartman.

"Sooo...How's he doing?" Kenny braces his cheek on one hand, tilting his head and watching how Tweek chewed on his own lip. It reminded him of the night before...He wore that frazzled boy out until he couldn't muster the energy to even twitch a muscle. It made him feel good, being of use to another person, taking their unhappiness away for awhile. Tweek was definitely more high maintenance than others, but that didn't mean he empathized with Craig at all, who according to Tweek had abandoned him to hang out with 'the gang'. Tweek couldn't maintain being in social settings like clubs and parties, he would rather stay in to talk about music and watch Red Racer. Apparently that hadn't been enough for Craig, even if he was a music snob and a shameless dork for Red Racer. 

Cartman took orders, made them without error or delay, and hadn't irritated any of the customers yet. He was doing his job and Tweek could afford to take a breather. "Uhm, good? But what if he--" the wiry blonde's cheeks blush as Kenny squeezes his hand, "He'll keep doing good, I promise. If he doesn't you can fire him, and he won't get mad at you." Tweek didn't know why he believed Kenny but he did, and he smiled having someone to temporarily confide in. He was unwilling to say it out loud, but this was just temporary wasn't it? 

Cartman grimaced seeing Kenny hold Tweek's hand, struggling to stay on task, mind working in separate shifts to think and make orders simultaneously. God damn Kenny Mccormick, that back alley whore; plucking heartstrings, getting high off of people's good feelings until their strain of emotion wasn't strong enough for him anymore. Did he really think he was helping anyone but himself acting like a living harlequin romance character, a tortured soul with an immaculate body? He loved and hated Kenny, with the cases for each emotion being very strong. He could go on to catalog each in his mind, but of all the places in town to get coffee...'They' just had to come here. Clyde, Bebe, Token, Wendy, and Craig. Craig hung at the back of the pack and looked like he immediately wanted to leave when he saw the tweaker's fingers intertwined with Kenny's. The schadenfreude felt good for Cartman, helped him produce a good enough fake smile to say: "Welcome to Tweek Bros...May I take your order?"

It must have been a fluke that they came in; they looked surprised to see Cartman behind the counter, so maybe he could get through this without getting fired? Bebe took over for Clyde who was obliviously smiling at Eric with a morning greeting on his lips. He almost felt sorry for the clueless preppy jock, letting Bebe walk all over him with shoes from his shop and his balls neatly stashed in her purse. But hey, maybe he liked that sort of thing. After a brief stint of working with him at his dad's shoe store, Butters was convinced the guy had some kind of fetish for girls' feet and the shoes they wore, eyes lingering on any piece with high heels or open toes. "One large mocha: no sugar, extra dry, with skim milk. One french roast, no cream and two sugars. And two old-fashioned donuts." 

The order jarred his mind from thinking of Bebe stomping on Clyde while wearing high-heeled leather thigh highs and he was grateful for it. Her order wasn't especially outrageous either. He was perfectly capable of handling it, though Tweek had extricated his hand from Kenny's and slunk behind the counter while averting his eyes to help out. With the coffee and donuts up on the counter, Token and Wendy were next. They were definitely going to be difficult. Token because he was a rich bastard with 'refined' tastes, and Wendy because she was a wicked bitch who hated his fat guts. "Hmmm, what to get..." that must be a coded phrase between the two, as Wendy stepped in to say, "Well, you know Token, maybe we ought to get some drinks for everyone at your work? I think they'd really appreciate it." Token nodded along, "You're right Wendy, I think that would be a really nice gesture." 

Despite protest from his parents, Token had funded a marijuana grow-op seeing a short supply and booming demands in Colorado. He had a hand in multiple businesses and played the stocks for fun, giving money to charities that Wendy picked out after exhaustive research into their structure and overheads. Eric knew Kenny wasn't fond of the big grows because the street market was thrown off-kilter and his home grown stuff was getting looked down on even by non-discerning potheads. The looming threat of a big order obviously stressed Cartman and Tweek; Wendy and Token savoring Eric's pain in particular. 'Those petty twats', thought Eric. When were they going to leave him be? Wendy piled on more orders for people at her work, more for Token's house servants and his parents, until finally the order came to sixteen drinks with multiple special orders, and they threw in Craig's to top it off. "What do you want Craig?" 

The legendary Peruvian-styled stoner Craig Tucker mumbled an order for a plain coffee and held fast even as Wendy tried to cajole him into getting something more complicated. It was obviously making him uncomfortable to include Tweek in the hazing against Cartman. The morning rush was still going and people lined up waiting while the monstrous order was assembled. 

Kenny took the scene in, studied how everyone reacted to the mounting pressure: People in line impatiently checking the time and stamping their feet between sighs. Clyde was looking over Bebe's shoulder sipping coffee as she showed him pictures of cute animals on her phone. Token and Wendy were gloating and leaning against each other. Cartman looked ready to punch the espresso machine. Craig was furtively watching Tweek's every move with poorly masked concern, the spazzy blonde's hand shaking more intensely as he grew ever more aware of the long line and the mounting pressure to get the big order ready or start losing customers. When he scalded himself on some spilt coffee he leapt back, looking ready to break down. Craig was rooted to the spot like he was watching a train crash with someone he knew on board, but Kenny was up and marching behind the counter to throw on an apron. Tweek stammered a complaint about Kenny not being an employee but Kenny was already following Cartman's lead and helping the next people in line. 

Tweek was struggling to compose himself, but Kenny had relieved a good deal of the pressure on him and he sighed with some relief. When he looked up he thought he saw Craig looking at him, but Craig pretended not to notice their eyes connecting and was looking elsewhere. Craig didn't want to see him. He probably asked his friends not to come here for coffee. He probably made fun of Tweek behind his back. "Hey, can you call the order for 17?" Kenny pulled his attention back to focus on work. "Token, Wendy...Gh! C-Craig..." Tweek brought the large order to the side counter, four serving sets with four cups each and one on it's own for the silent raven-haired boy.

The group had to carry one set a piece until Bebe made Clyde carry two, Token stuffing a generous tip into the tip jar. Tweek handed Craig his cup personally and breathed uneasily, daring him to lock eyes again. Craig's fingers closed around the top of the hot cup, avoiding Tweek's trembling digits and his intense stare. 'Say something, anything, please...' Tweek boiled inside but Craig only asked: "Are you dating Kenny Mccormick?" Tweek gaped, "Gh! Wha-? N-No..." Craig mumbled, tugging his cup away from Tweek, "You were holding hands..." Tweek was wringing his hands together, why did Craig care? "He was just...Being nice to me..." 

"Oh." That's all Craig said before he was walking away, leaving Tweek stunned in his wake. Kenny Mccormick had a reputation for 'being nice' to people. That single syllable utterance from Craig sounded repulsed. Just like that he and his 'gang' were gone again. Tweek numbly kept working while static blared inside of his head, the voices of others sounding muffled and far away. "Tweek. Tweek...! Tweek!" Kenny had a hand on his shoulder and was trying to snap him out of the dreary trance he'd sunk into. "God dammit Tweek, fucking pay attention!" Eric's angry, intimidating shout pierced through and got him fully functioning again. Kenny was pulling off the apron he'd snagged, "We're through the rush, are you okay Tweek?"

Tweek shook his head and bit his lip, tearing up. "C-Craig...He...Gah! He hates me! He hates me so much! What did I do to him!?" Kenny hugs the tweaker tightly and brushes the back of his hair, "Shhh..." Cartman rolled his eyes, "Fuck Craig! Why do you give a shit about him!?" Tweek clutches Kenny's back tightly, "H-he was my friend! And now..." Cartman pulls Tweek away from his new bright orange security blanket, "And now he's not because he's a hippy asshole stoner burnout!"

Tweek tugs at his hair, "That doesn't explain anything though...Why isn't he my friend anymore?" Kenny and Cartman frown knowingly, sharing a glance. "People you thought were your friends can leave you behind, Tweek. We may not always know why, and we shouldn't care, it's their loss!" Tweek sniffles, he didn't really expect Eric Cartman to be trying to cheer him up. "But I want to know, it keeps me up at night, it hurts." Cartman folds his arms, "Well being a weepy bitch isn't going to get you an answer." Tweek fiddles with the buttons on his uniform top, "What then?" Cartman bumps his fist into Tweek's chest and he stumbles back in surprise, "Get pissed, Tweek!"

The tweaker got wide eyes. He hadn't heard that in years. He had no idea at the time but it was those four troublesome boys that arranged a fight between he and Craig, got them worked up with rumors about how they talked about the other behind their backs. After that fight, and a brawl in the hospital, they came to realize that they really had no reason to be at odds. "S-So I should...Choose him? Start a fight!?" Kenny cocked an eyebrow at Cartman, he wasn't sure if he condoned this or not... 

Cartman shrugged, "You have to confront him." Tweek was chewing on the nail of his right thumb, elbow in the palm of his left hand. "What do I do if we can't make up...?" Cartman pilfered some donut holes from the display and snacked to get his energy back up, "What would you want to do?" Tweek took a good long while to think about it but answered, "I'd want to leave this place for good. There's nothing else for me here if Craig doesn't want anything to do with me. But I don't have the money."

Cartman flashed a wide smile taking a look around in the empty coffee house, "I know how you can get the money..." Kenny stepped forward, "Oh, no! No, no, no! Cartman? No!" Cartman wagged a finger, "It's up to him, Kenny! Tweek, what would you think about helping the two of us rob a bank?" The unpredictable caffeine addict's lip twitched, curling and uncurling his fingers into his palms. Normally he'd stammer out all the reasons why that was such a bad idea, such a terrible risk; but all he could think about was Craig. How he left, today and one year before; just left him behind like he was some troublesome pet afraid of it's own shadow. He needed the money, he needed the courage. "Gh!" he started feeling it, started getting pissed off. He was tired of being a slave to his absent parents and to the memories of his best friend. He'd gotten into some dicey situations with Cartman and Kenny before, so... "Grr! Gah! I'll do it!"


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A flashback following Kenny...

On Kenny’s 21st birthday, he had made modest plans: hunting with his father and brother in the early morning, baking a cake with his mother and sister in the afternoon, and in the evening have a private get-together with his closest friends.

The hunt went well: he got a new compound bow and he didn’t get the urge to shoot either his dad or his brother for once. The baking, once he was home and washed up, also went well: Karen and Carol couldn’t keep him from helping make his favorite carrot cake for his own birthday, enjoying the process as a labor of love to share. Everything was looking up and the rest of the evening would be wholesome gaiety with his best friends, nothing too crazy. This desire for safety and simplicity was, as always, compromised by Eric Cartman. Out of nowhere as he was outside smoking a joint, a blindfold was slipped over his eyes. He thrusted back an elbow into what felt like a pudgy gut. A slightly irritating whine short of breath hit his ears,”God damnit, take it easy birthday boy!”

Kenny let himself get pulled along hearing Cartman’s voice, bumping his head as he was directed to sit in the passenger seat of Eric’s car. “Where are we going..?”

"Well, that’s a surprise," Cartman clarified. "I’d really rather just have a quiet night in Cartman, I wish you hadn’t gone and made some kind of plan." Kenny tried to explain as clearly as he could but he went unheeded.

"That’s how a surprise birthday party works, Kenny. You’ve got your whole miserable life to have weak birthday parties. This is your 21st, and I know deep down you want this. You want people to say ‘remember that time at Kenny’s 21st birthday party?’ that’s your legacy. Don’t puss out on me."  
Kenny sighed and sunk in his seat, giving in as usual to Cartman’s plotting.

When he was unblindfolded he put on his best impression of someone surprised and enthralled to see his new environment and the beaming faces of everyone he knew from school. Token’s house. The decorations were nice, the spread was all there, and he did like all of these people unconditionally but this development had complicated things for him. He was going to be stuck socializing and getting shitfaced when he just wanted to spend time with about five or six people, and try to tell one in particular something he’d only have the guts to say on his special day.

He went through the motions, getting lots of wacky or raunchy gifts from his friends. They saw in him a sex-obsessed party god at best and a filthy deviant slut at worst who would eat his own puke for a fiver. Only those special few people bothered to look deeper, and after a lot of soul searching he thought he’d picked one he wanted to share even more of himself with. However, as the night wore on, he just couldn’t find the chance. They were always talking with someone else, drunk themselves, and he sped his own consumption with a taste of bitterness.

"Spare a cigarette…?" Kenny found his pockets empty of them when he stumbled into the expansive backyard, the goth kids outside admiring and condemning the landscaped view simultaneously as it was a symptom of the conformity of the rich to spend their wealth on frivolous things, but also it looked quite picturesque.

"You are one year closer to death, happy birthday Kenneth." Pete reintroduced the christmasy taste and aroma of clove cigarettes to Kenny and did the favor of lighting the gifted cancer stick for him. Kenny took a good inhale and let out a hollow laugh, "Thanks, but death is nothing to me. I’m immortal. I just got back from hell in time for my birthday."

"How’s Prince Damien…?" the youngest goth Firkle, definitely too young to be at this drinking party, took quite an interest in what the rest of them considered as tall tales.

"Oh please, stop humoring him Firkle. He was probably tripping balls off in the woods again like the rest of the counter culture druggie conformists." Kenny sidled closer to Henrietta who was always voicing her suspicious of him, exhaling smoke, "You’ll all see one day, when you die." the conviction with which he said it put a shiver to most of the group.

"I believe him." Firkle couldn’t know for sure but he believed Kenny with certainty based just on the way he talked about death, and the grim reality of his existence as an immortal.  
"Thank you, Firkle. Damien is getting very anxious to rule the damned left on Earth after the Rapture, but Jesus is always pushing the date back. Don’t quote me on this, but we’re looking at Summer 2020." Kenny’s news brought a sigh of relief out of Firkle, "It’ll be worth the wait to see everyone realize they’re damned. Only the most faithful conformists of all go to heaven, and the prince of darkness will lead his masses to raze God’s kingdom in righteous vengeance that will soak the clouds red."

"You guys, uh…Doing a poetry slam out here?"

Kenny’s head whipped around to see Stan loosely holding a bottle of beer walking outside, tentatively approaching him and the goths. “Would you like to join in, Raven?” Henrietta teased him with a mockingly theatric air that embarrassed Stan. “Well, I…” Stan trailed, interrupted by Michael, “Quothe the Raven, ‘Nevermore’. We know you’re not here to hang out with us. Are you here to rescue your friend?”

Pete and Henrietta lit fresh cigarettes to look too occupied to address Stan further. A brooding jock who deep down ‘got them’…? Too good to be true. Neither expected Stan to hang around; that valedictorian conformist Kyle Broflovski would drag him away by the scruff of his neck telling him not to ‘be mopey’. That self-righteous turd told them they didn’t know what suffering was, what did he know? They lived ordinary lives, but they had glimpsed beyond the veil at the true nature of reality as a nonsensical nightmare full of people daydreaming that life was somehow precious.

"Just checking in on him, really…" Stan busied himself with his bottle and Kenny tried not to look too excited to break away with his friend, "I needed a break, too many eyes on me. You want to, uh…Take a walk?"

Pete and Henrietta exchanged knowing glances while Micheal and Firkle were already back to talking about the most likely date for the rapture and Kenny left after the raven.

Kenny fell against Stan who laughed and supported him, “You didn’t really try to drink 21 shots did you?” Kenny meandered with a recount of his drinking, “Two beers, one wine cooler, three shots since I got here. I think I looped back around the drunkometer though, I feel perfectly sober!”

"Don’t go too crazy, alright…?" Stan’s earnest smile made Kenny feel safe. One of the hardest deaths he had experienced was slowly slipping away in a hospital bed with Stan nowhere to be found. Kenny hugged his friend tightly knowing he wanted to be there, "I won’t…If you say so."

"Haha, dude, you’ve really had it if you’re hanging on me like this…" Stan hugged back loosely and stopped their sidewinding walk among the neatly trimmed hedges of Token’s estate. Kenny stayed there a long time, forehead to his chest. "Are you okay? Don’t throw up on my shoes." Stan warned, trying to pull away.

"I won’t. You try not to throw up for this either, okay?" Kenny gripped Stan’s forearms as he looked back quizzically, "Huh? What are you talking abou—"

Kenny had absconded with all the meaningful things he’d composed in his head for this and was mashing his lips with Stan’s, his weight sending them back into a hedge. He felt like he was falling with the weight of a feather, but when Stan pushed and jerked away from him he was plummeting like a stone laying arms akimbo against the bushy plant behind him.

They were silent and moisture collected in Kenny’s eyes studying Stan’s expression. “Why do you look so mad…? Hey, Stan, come on dude…Is it really so…”

"I’m with Kyle, dude." Stan grimaced like he was annoyed he hadn’t noticed, but really he had not. They certainly hadn’t told anyone, they never acted like a couple in front of him, what the fuck was happening? "Oh," was all that Kenny could slur out, and he’d never felt so poor or stupid having only that to say. "I’m…S-sorry, dude…" they kept dropping that same term of endearment, dude, that’s what they were. Just a pair of friends, Kenny’d gone and drunkenly kissed him, and hopefully Stan’s closeted boyfriend didn’t catch wind of it.

"It’s, okay. Don’t…Don’t cry, okay?" Stan looked emotional himself, but the way he said it made Kenny feel like his own emotions were a burden. "Not, crying…!" Kenny choked on a sob and ran off too humiliated to stay any longer, hit with the tired irony as he re-entered the mansion that the party was perfectly lively without him there. He wanted to erase what had just happened from his mind, it wasn’t supposed to be this way. The sight of alcohol was not at all alluring and he shouldered his way through the party until he found the one person likely to be keeping a few recreational pills on them.

"Tweek! Oh, Tweek, come here you…" Kenny hugged Tweek to him and felt him jitter in his clutches. "A-Are you crying? What’s wrong? Did someone die!?" Tweek flew off the handle and Kenny wiped his eyes on his sleeve, "You know the tune, don’t you? It’s my party, I’ll cry if I want to! How are you? On something fun?"

Tweek hissed, “Keep your voice down…!” as if anyone at this party cared what illicit substances people chose to put in themselves short of meth or heroin. “Ecstasy…” the tweeker whispered and Kenny lit up, “Ooh, that sounds like exactly what I want for my birthday!” Tweek dug in his pockets, and flinched when once he produced a little pill Kenny nipped it out of his fingers with his mouth. “Let’s let these kick in somewhere comfy, yeah…?” Kenny offered.

"Uhh…I-I was sorta waiting for Craig…" Tweek mumbled bashfully and Kenny pshawed, "He’s probably couchlocked with Clyde somewhere, don’t you think?" Tweek grumbled in agreement and entered the nearest guest room behind Kenny, dropping his teal jacket just outside the door. The pair flopped down into a luxurious bed and Kenny shed his shirt wanting to feel the obscenely nice threads on his flesh, nothing at all like the ratty quilts in his home. "Ahhh, this feels great…"

"Did you get everything you wanted for your birthday…?" Tweek inquired, docile as Kenny tried to tame his messy hair with his fingers, the sensations running over his scalp feeling pleasant.

"Not what I wanted most." Time dripped by distorted by his altered brain chemistry, the bodies of the bedmates melting together settled in the center of the bed. The physical closeness was patching up Kenny nicely and they closed their eyes with only the light of the moon from the window on them.

"What is that?" Tweek didn’t mind this at all, though Kenny playing with the misaligned buttons of his shirt made him anxious. "Just some attention, I guess. But I can’t seem to get it. You know what that’s like?" Kenny went to the trouble of buttoning the shirt the right way only to unbutton it again as he spoke. "Yeah." Tweek blurted in frustration, feeling bad for voicing it. They didn’t have much to say after that. They tried touching, kissing, embracing, escalating the intimacy of their contact with determination to climb a summit regardless of their desired partners, as waiting unfulfilled had grown intolerable beyond words. With the peak just in their reach, the locked bedroom door rattled. "Tweek?"

The look on Tweek’s face when he heard Craig’s voice made Kenny withdraw instantly and he was plummeting again from even greater heights. He wasn’t sure what to do with himself, but Tweek was up and hurrying to the door, his habit of poorly wearing shirts working to his advantage for once. “I was j-just resting…Ghh!” Tweek spasmed nervously, hurrying to get out of the room before Craig could look inside, but Kenny was sure their eyes locked in the dark. He flopped back in bed and contemplated spending the rest of his life in Token’s guest room. Maybe Token would take him in as a human pet if he was neutered and trained not to track shit wherever he went.

Noticing the baggy of pills Tweek left on the dresser he upended the contents into his mouth and took them all down dry, the mix of their bitter tastes pooling in his mouth. The crescent moon slowly fell like a guillotine as his birthday bled away without him attached to it, hearing peals of laughter outside as people trickled out of the house to stumble home. He had drained the new flask he’d been gifted and found it a great ordeal to get to the bathroom across the hall when he felt the need to empty his stomach of toxins.

The door slammed open mid-heave with some obnoxious intruding force behind it, Kenny objecting, “I’m in here, fucking asshole, go away. Find one of the other dozen bathrooms,” Kenny groaned. Cartman sat up on the countertop clutching a bottle of vodka and asked, “What the fuck happened to you?”

"Your stupid surprise party fucked my life, that’s what happened." Kenny groaned and let loose another hail of bright orange puke. "Ugggghh, I made a pass at Stan only to find out…He’s with Kyle."

Cartman heaved an angry sigh and took a draught of vodka, chasing it with a gulp of redbull from his other hand. “It’s like you’re my foil in this fucking drama…That sneaky fucking…Jew. He didn’t even use being with Stan as an excuse and he shot me down…Hey, are you listening? Kenny? Are you seriously okay?”

Kenny blearily shook his head, flopping a hand up to flush the toilet. “I took way too much…Way too much…” Cartman stood up from the counter, “What, you want to go to the hospital…?”

"No." Kenny slumped off from the rim of the bowl and flopped against the wall. "Just let me die like this." He was sticky, pale, emptied of bile, and breathing slowly.

"If that’s what you want. Go ahead and die." Cartman huffed at him without a hint of mercy.

"Don’t go…" Kenny pleaded, needing someone to see him pass on.

"I wasn’t going to." Cartman assured him, watching him all the while. He moved closer and sat next to Kenny who fell against his chest. Kenny clutched at Eric’s jacket, too dehydrated to cry any further. "You’re a demon, Eric." Kenny meant that as a compliment. Only demons were there to care for him when he was in hell. Thick arms hugged him tighter as he shook and slipped towards death in sleep. "If I die they’ll forget, everything will be okay…"

"No one should be allowed to forget you dying." Cartman intoned, kissing his forehead. It was the nicest thing he’d ever said to Kenny, he couldn’t think to question it. A bottle of vodka was placed to his lips before Eric allowed him the kiss he had tried to take for himself. Cartman took his last breath away and his eyes fluttered closed as they parted.

He was uncomfortable floating as a spirit without a feeling of gravity, looking down as he was leaving his body. He saw Tweek and Butters dashing into the bathroom before the lights and colors of the world faded to black. When he came back to life after a long melancholic spell spent in hell, Stan and Kyle had left town and no one could remember where Kenny got off to at the end of the night…What a crazy party.

Kenny hadn’t been to Token’s since, so he was feeling just as anxious as Tweek was when Cartman told them they had to crash one of his parties to confront Craig…


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We return to Token's mansion in the present, following Tweek...

Tweek kept his eyes on his shoes as Cartman and Kenny walked ahead of him to the front door of Token’s lavish estate. His body was trembling and his mind was retreating inward. His thoughts were disjointed scenes detailing the worst things that could possibly happen tonight. His capacity to breathe decreased and it was hard to concentrate on anyone’s voice in particular as the front door was opened. The cacophony of the social crowd: it’s sights, sounds, and smells was an oppressive distorted nostalgia. He couldn’t remember everything that had happened that night of Kenny’s 21st, but Craig had become distant ever since. It must have been something Tweek had done that caused Craig to avoid him, so why was he bothering coming here to confront him? Craig wasn’t friends with him anymore, Craig was part of Token’s entourage with Clyde.

Tweek was staring into space wringing his hands and chewing on his bottom lip, stripping off the chapped flesh with his teeth when Kenny put a hand to his shoulder and eased him toward a relatively quiet corner in the party house. “I sent Eric to get some drinks. Tweek, can you breathe for me, please? In through your nose and out through your mouth.” Kenny demonstrated with exaggerated motions until Tweek was attempting to do the same. Tweek followed along but it felt like he was trying to inflate a tire that had already popped, “I can’t do it!”

Kenny’s empathetic expression only made Tweek feel more burdensome, especially because he could tell that Kenny wanted to kiss him to try and calm him down. His association with Kenny seemed to be a part of why Craig cut him loose so he would avoid it with a guilty expression on his face. Cartman morphed in out of Tweek’s unfocused peripheral vision and was suddenly forcing a bottle of beer into his hand.

"Alright you blonde tarts, get drinking, we’re on a a mission." Cartman drank his beer down rapidly before launching into his plan: "Token’s inner circle is in the billiards room. Kenny and I will challenge Wendy and Bebe to a game, which will occupy not only them but their boyfriends, thereby singling out the fifth wheel Craig for Tweek to talk to. Are there any questions…?" both of his friend’s hands shot up and Cartman pinched the bridge of his nose. "God damnit. What?"

Kenny chimed in first, “What will make Wendy and Bebe want to play us in billiards?” Cartman was irritated ever having to explain his plans, taking for granted that the people following him would want to know he’d covered the contingencies. “Shit talk, Kenny. They’re already liquored up, we just need to talk shit and if that doesn’t work we need to bet something stupid. We kick ass at shooting pool so it doesn’t matter what it is.” Kenny didn’t look so sure, knowing that Bebe and Wendy were poolsharks themselves, but he could suck up any punishment to help out a friend. Tweek took his turn to speak next, tired of holding his hand up and feeling self-conscious. “What do I say?”

Cartman threw up his hands, “I’m not Cyrano de-fucking Bergerac Tweek, you have to figure out what to say to him! Here’s a prompt, four easy words: ‘can we talk privately?’” Tweek despaired, already tearing off the paper label around the cold beer, “What if he says no?” Cartman surprised Tweek with a hand on his shoulder and a forceful meeting of the eyes, “Then you tell him it’s the last chance he’ll have.”

That final prompt stirred something in Tweek, it sounded right. If Craig were to refuse after hearing that then he shouldn’t try. What he said next would have to come to him, but he was prepared to say at least that. He picked up his eyes from the floor and followed to the billiards room at the back of the mansion, walking in on Wendy and Bebe playing Snooker while the boys were gossiping with their cellphones out. Cartman cleared his throat and commanded the attention of the room which irked Wendy who scratched a difficult shot she was carefully lined up for. “Cartman, what are you doing here?”

Cartman rocked on his heels with his hands behind his back, “Crashing the party, showing up announced, the usual. I’d like to make a little wager over a game of doubles. If I win, you stop trying to get me fired from wherever I happen to be employed. And if you win…Well, name your price.” Kenny was not feeling good about Cartman handing over a blank check in both their names, and the smiles of the girls validated his unease.

"If we win, you eat Kenny’s underwear." Bebe laughed and leaned against her pool stick, her hip cocked out to the right. Cartman was quick to correct, "Kenny’s not wearing any," the poor boy in question affirmed as much to the leers of Token’s group. Wendy named her own wager, "If we win, you have to move out of South Park by the end of the month." Cartman threw up his shoulders in response, "Sure." That was a shock to Kenny. Was he really so arrogant and sure of himself he wasn’t considering the possibility of having to leave town? He signed a questionable contract that would nonetheless pass the desk of the Token family lawyer, and the pool balls were gathered to rack up. Bebe insisted, "Kenny shouldn’t get off scott free if he loses. I’ve got just the punishment in mind…"

Kenny didn’t overlook the opportunity to flirt, picking up a stick and chalking the tip, “If you’re thinking what I’m thinking, then I’d take that win or lose…But if you’re thinking of putting me in a gimp suit for it, I should remind you I’m allergic to latex.” Clyde looked up from his phone with a petulant expression, “You do not have a latex allergy.” Cartman and Wendy seemed the most aggravated with the conversation, looking quite serious about the competition at hand; the fatboy looking briefly over to Tweek to communicate that he should make a move.

Tweek had observed Craig looking up from his phone once when they entered and not pulling his eyes away from the screen since. The short walk over the carpet to him stretched into an infinity of heartbeats thumping between his ears. His mouth opened and nothing came out, a strangled reedy sound forming from his dry throat. “Ah…Craig? Er…” Tweek fought to keep his eyes centered as his ex-best friend deigned to look up at him. He struggled to remember his lines. “Can we talk? In private?” Tweek held in his breath as if he wouldn’t hear Craig’s reply otherwise: “Why do you want to talk?”

Tweek whined with distress at his resistance, he really was bothering Craig just showing up asking for answers out of the blue. What was he supposed to say again? “It…Could be your last chance to, so…Please?” the cryptic appeal forced some reaction out of Craig, though his default expression was one void of emotion. The pair left the room and from there walked outside the house, the transition between environments stifled with awkward silence.

Tweek was so certain he’d have nothing to say but once his feet had carried him far enough away from the crowd he could breathe again and his mouth blurted out, “I hadn’t seen you in a long time.” While that was a true statement Craig had no reply to it and Tweek added, “Why? I miss you.”

Craig’s eyes rolled with disregard. “We just hang out with different people. You don’t like my friends…And I don’t like yours.” Tweek denied it, “I like your friends! I just don’t think they like me. We used to hang out, why don’t we anymore?” Craig exhaled with some irritation, “You ought to know.” Tweek clutched at his messy blonde hair and tugged while shaking his head, “Gah, I don’t! Is it really just because of Kenny and Cartman?” Craig’s expression grew daunting to Tweek with mild signifiers of anger. “It’s because of Kenny and you.” Tweek looked hurt, confused. “I told you, there’s nothing going on between me and Kenny!” Kenny had just been nice to him, offered him some company when no one else would, least of all the company he most wanted to keep. “Yeah, that’s what you said. And I know it’s a lie.” Craig said it with such conviction. Why couldn’t Tweek place the source of Craig’s knowledge of he and Kenny? The anxious male was grinding his teeth together,”We’re not!”

Craig glared, “That’s even worse!” Tweek cried out in distress, further befuddled, “What are you talking about?” Craig jabbed a finger at Tweek that felt like it would break through his hollow-feeling chest. “That there’s not even anything going on with you and Kenny, but you’re casually having sex with him.” Tweek felt trapped, what he’d said was true, but how could he have possibly known, and why did it matter after being seperated for so long? His silence seemed all the more incriminating and Craig’s expression of displeasure was running over Tweek like a lawnmower. “I told you I didn’t want anything to do with Kenny Mccormick or Eric Cartman, but you kept seeing Kenny to get drugs.”

Tweek stammered and flailed, trying to hold his guts in place as he was hit with pangs of nausea, “But, you, I…” his protests were fully formed in his head but were getting shredded by his mouth into incomplete scraps of speech. He knew Craig didn’t care for Kenny or Cartman, but he didn’t know his habit was looking like an addiction to his friend. “I can stop…We can—” Craig held up a hand with a universal sign that stopped Tweek from speaking anymore, just gaping with an open mouth.

"You’re just here because they told you to come, right?" Tweek couldn’t deny it, he would be too frightened to come on his own, but Craig was not being sympathetic in the least. "What did you mean when you said it could be my last chance to talk to you?"

Tweek gripped handfulls of his own shirt, his mind reeling like a radio between channels of static looking for a station in range. “I’ve been saving up…And I’m going to move out of South Park.” The surprise blow put Craig off the attack, looking for an explanation, “Why? You’ve been left with a house and a business, you can live a quiet, simple life like you want.”

Tweek tugged at his own shirt, fingertips digging into his palms through the cloth. “That’s not what I want. We said we would move out together. I would…Paint and you would play music, and…” Tweek’s eyes watered as he saw no zeal for their old dream on Craig’s face who replied, “That wasn’t going to work out. We can’t depend on eachother or make a living on those things.”

Tweek pleaded, “That’s not what you said then! You said we could do it! We’d get side jobs, a-at a cafe or a pet store, and…” Craig shook his head, “That was a fantasy. Were you telling me hoping that I’d come with you?” Tweek was self-destructing inside, he hadn’t imagined an outcome as painful as this. “I’m leaving with you or without you. I want to leave with you!”

Craig’s flat, unperturbed expression hurt Tweek deeply. “I can’t depend on you. All of my friends are in agreement. You got yourself mixed up with a bad crowd. You just want an easy out.”

Tweek fought back with what little he could muster, “What do they say about me? About my friends? What do they know?” Craig laid into him, “That Eric Cartman is a nazi manchild, Kenny Mccormick and Butters Stotch are deviant pill-popping prostitutes, and…”

Tweek glared. Butters and Kenny were good people. They were full of warmth, compassion, and optimism. Even Eric Cartman was maturing, and it was Craig’s circle of friends that were sitting in judgement of others that was really hurting him. “And what about me?” Tweek challenged.

Craig shrugged, “They say you’re a tweaker. A drug addict. One of Eric Cartman’s ‘golden boys’. Is that how you’ve gotten the money to leave town?”

Tweek couldn’t place what drove him to do it; but he stepped in with his right foot, pivoted his hips, drove his right hand forward in a closed fist, and punched Craig Tucker in the face with a right straight like Stan’s Uncle Jimbo had taught him to.

"Fuck you!" Tweek bellowed, becoming unhinged. "Fuck you for believing them and not me!" Cartman had talked plenty of shit about Token’s group but Tweek didn’t blindly accept all of it as fact. That’s how talk behind people’s backs worked, as long as they weren’t there to defend themselves anything was permissable. Craig hadn’t defended him when they said such terrible things? He believed it?

Caught flat-footed, Craig had to weather the barrage of fast punches from Tweek knocking against his body unpredictably, a few swinging wide or just clipping against the arms he held up as a shield, his right eye shut and watering from the first punch he took. Another whiffed punch glancing off his shoulder gave Craig a window to strike back and he took it; halting Tweek’s advance with an unpracticed punch that sprung a leak of blood from Tweek’s nose as it connected with the center of his face. The melee briefly came to a standstill, Craig feeling the soreness surge through his arms and Tweek crying out clutching hands to his nose.

"Are you happy now?" Craig scoffed, putting his arms down, that violent outburst only bolstering the talk that Tweek was an unstable junkie. "Nho!" Tweek’s palms were painted red after being cupped under his nose, struggling to speak intelligibly, "Are you happy living like a guinea pig scrounging off those conceited assholes? Have you even had a job since you quit working with me?"

Craig had never turned in a notice, he had just stopped showing up to Tweek bros. until he was removed from the payroll. He really hadn’t gotten a full-time job since and was stuck living at home, making himself scarce as often as he could. The truth of it put a hackle into Craig’s ego. He was stunned first, and once the hair on the back of his neck was bristling he launched himself at Tweek. The two rumbled over the grass getting filthy with blood and grime as they exchanged blows.

Inside the mansion, Jimmy Valmer had ambled to the window to get some fresh air. He was in town just for the weekend and had his own room at Token’s estate picked out for whenever he happened to drop by. He dressed smartly and carried himself well which ingratiated himself with the Black family. It was fun to see everyone who had decided to stay in South Park; they always supported his drive to be a stand-up comedian and when a crowd made him nervous he would imagine that a few of them were somewhere in the rabble watching him. This pleasant reflection on his friendships in South Park was suddenly in stark contrast to a savage brawl in progress coming into view in the backyard.

"What-what in the world…?!" Jimmy rushed himself to the back door and awkwardly fumbled with the handle in a hurry to get it open, partially impeded by his forearm crutches. Tweek and Craig were in a world for two, a battlefield of the disillusioned, fighting with nothing but destruction in mind.

"Stop it! S-Stop it I said…!" Jimmy pleaded, staggering out onto the veranda. "Someone help!" Jimmy shouted back inside as his words went unheeded, seeing no window of opportunity to split them up- they were tussling in close quarters, Tweek’s shirt getting ripped open and Craig’s hat flung off somewhere in the hedges. Heidi Turner was scurrying outside in her heels hearing Jimmy call for help, gasping at the fight. "Oh my god, I’m calling the cops!"

"What’s going on out there…?" Token heard a commotion that pulled him away from the game in the billiards room where Wendy and Bebe had a strong lead against the unpracticed Kenny and the overconfident Cartman.

"Oh my god, Heidi Turner just snapchatted this: Tweek and Craig are fighting outside!" Clyde flashed his phone to Bebe and was rushing outside to his friend with Token before his girlfriend could ask why he was snapchatting with Heidi.

"What about our game?" Cartman and Wendy had the same thought, but Wendy said it first with a callous expression of disdain. "We have to help Tweek!" Kenny yanked Eric’s arm and dashed along trying to force himself to the head of the charging pack that was thirsty to see a fight like they had been since grade school.

"Jimmy, what happened!" Token looked on the same as everyone else, no one willing to make a move to come between the two sparring. "I don’t know, I just looked outside and they were already w-w…Whaling on eachother!"

Token, Clyde, Kenny, and Cartman communicated their intent to break up the bloodbath and rushed in together to pry the fighters apart who were kicking and screaming obscenities: “Get the fuck out of town already if that’s what you want!” Craig spat and Tweek spat back, “You know it’s not what I want, but you don’t give a fuck!”

"Tweek, calm down!" Kenny held fast onto the boy’s left shoulder thrashing in his grip, Cartman holding the right; voicing his support by saying, "Hey, let him say what he wants. You did good, Tweek."

"All of you watching, go back inside, this is none of your business!" the crowd was largely non-committed to following the host’s request, drawn to the conflict unfolding before them, Token turning his attention to the interlopers. "You crashed my party so you could beat the shit out of my friend…?" Token glared, his hold on Craig slackening. "You three are fucked up!" Clyde chimed in, dabbing a handkerchief over Craig’s face.

Cartman looked ready to feed the conflagration with a pithy response, but Tweek spoke for himself, “No! You all came into my store this morning and the only thing Craig had to say to me after all this time was whether or not I was seeing Kenny. I wanted to know why, and he told me all about what you’ve been saying about us!”

Jimmy shook his head in disbelief, “I can’t believe what I’m hearing! What happened to you, fellas? You used to be c-close.”  
Craig supported himself after finding it difficult to stand, “Used to be. Things change. Stan and Kyle got sick of them, why couldn’t we?”

Kenny seethed, releasing Tweek. “You’re fucking with the wrong one Craig, don’t you think for one second you can say shit like that and get away with it.” Wendy and Bebe looked on expectantly from the veranda at the squabble with a detached view as Jimmy continued to plead for the drama to come to an end, but Craig goaded them with further verbal abuse. “Everyone’s sick of you. Everything you and Cartman touch turns to shit. Stan and Kyle ditched you because you’re dead weight.”

"Craig, that’s enough." Token sided with Jimmy but Clyde was just as hungry to rip into the social pariahs with his friend, specifically targetting Tweek, "That’s why Craig ditched you too."

Kenny saw the shattered expression on Tweek’s face before snapping forward to throttle Clyde and exact a physical toll for the heinous things they had said. Jimmy tripped and fell back on his ass as six of his friends exploded into a fresh round of combat, Heidi helping him up and away from the conflict. “It’s okay, the police should be here soon!”

"Kick his ass, Clyde!" Bebe cheered with a cigarette held loosely between her fingers, nails done up in a cherry red that she didn’t intend to scuff by getting involved; leaning against the banister railing of the veranda. Wendy heaved a great sigh, expecting Token at least to keep from getting involved, but there he was rolling in the dirt with Cartman like a pair of children again. "Are you alright Jimmy? I’m really sorry you had to see this."

Jimmy looked disturbed, “I’m fine. But it’s the damndest thing. I guess I’ve missed a lot by leaving town.” Wendy’s eyes maintained the same level of disinterest as she watched. “No, not really…But once Cartman leaves town things should get back to normal.” Blue and red lights whirled around driving up the wide road of the estate as Jimmy raised his voice over the siren to ask, “What makes you sure that Cartman’s leaving town?” Wendy didn’t strain herself to speak over the siren, but it was clear that she said something to the affect of “Trust me.”

Officer Barbrady flipped off the siren and lurched out of his squad car, making sweeping gestures with his hands as he approached the squabble. “Alright, move along, nothing to see here! Skeedaddle you lookie-loos! You lot break it up or you can all spend a night behind bars! These three are going down to the station.” All of the participants had taken their lumps and mutually seperated to nurse their wounds. Tweek had kept himself going with adrenaline but his energy was falling out from under him as his hands were put behind his back to get ziptied together. “Craig…Tell me I wasn’t dead weight. Please.” the plea felt futile but Craig responded, mindful of the hurt he saw in Tweek and the disappointment he saw from Jimmy. “You weren’t, Tweek…I was. I’m sorry.”

Once he was pushed into the back of the cop car with Kenny and Cartman, Tweek knocked his head against the glass window in teary frustration. He couldn’t help but think that neither he nor Craig benefited from the company they kept. If they could just be together it would be okay again…But how could he pull Craig away from his safety net when he didn’t trust him anymore?

All the way up to getting locked in the drunk tank Tweek was quiet until Barbrady inquired as to who each of them would call to bail them out in the morning. Kenny would call Butters. Cartman would have to call his mom. Tweek decided to call Craig when his turn came. It went straight to voicemail as expected and after a shaky exhale he made his next plea. “It’s Tweek. I know I said that was your last chance before I left town but…I’d give you another if you wanted it. You weren’t dead weight to me.” the tired blonde boy looped the springy phone cord around his finger. “My friends supported me when I said I wanted to get in touch with you again, because they want me to be happy. Your friends didn’t. So…Think it over for yourself. I still lo-” the tone on the phone cut him off while he still had so much more to say, hammering the receiver back down in exasperation. “I still love you.” he mumbled that sad reminder to no one like he had so many times before. Leaving at the end of the month sounded as good a time as any; he couldn’t bear to wait any longer than that for an answer. In the meantime he had to get the funds together, which would mean working with Kenny and Cartman just a while longer…After finally confronting Craig, robbing a bank sounded like nothing, and he would do anything to secure the future they had dreamed of.


	4. Chapter 4

It had been a rough night for Cartman: he couldn't sleep a wink on the prison cot, though he noticed that Kenny had no problem at all curling up beside him and getting a good rest. Officer Barbrady looked down at them with some disdain, knocking his baton against the bars once he'd schlepped into view from his office down the hall. "Eric Cartman, I've got a message from your mother Liane Cartman," Barbrady spoke formally in his capacity as a lawman despite his familiarity with the boys. Eric sat up in a hurry and Kenny winced with annoyance getting woken up. "Finally! When is she going to be here?" Cartman asked, mentally readjusting his budget thinking he'd have to pay bail or at least some kind of holding fee. "She'll be here at...Uhmm...When? Oh, that's right, she's not coming," Barbrady mused aloud checking his watch and then looking up, expression blank behind his mirror shades. It was hard to tell if the barely literate and partially tone deaf policeman possessed the ability for sarcasm or not, but it stung Cartman badly all the same and he lashed out, "What!? God dammit! Get me to a phone!" Barbrady hit the bars again and now Tweek had woken up, gasping in fright and turning to listen to Barbrady half-shouting, "Easy, buster brown! You can sort that out on your own time. Lucky for you, Wendy Testaburger is here to bail you out instead, so I hope you've got an apology ready." Cartman blinked in disbelief as Barbardy walked down toward the other end of the hall. Tweek looked just as disturbed as Eric over on his own cot and Kenny rose up trying not to stress out, "Do we have an apology ready?" 

Cartman hissed, "Why should I apologize? I didn't start the fight." Tweek crossed his arms and hugged himself, tugging at the arms of his shirt anxiously, listening to the click clack of heels and the patter of three sets of shoes returning from down the hall en route to their cell. "You're just loving this, aren't you?" Cartman asked of Wendy as the cell was unlocked and they were lead to freedom. "Not particularly. You can thank Craig and Jimmy for Token not pressing charges. Cartman briefly looked over his shoulder as they left holding, seeing a bruised Craig and Tweek falling in step with each other and Kenny excusing himself to Jimmy for last night on the grounds of having too much to drink. 

"So why are you here?" Cartman asked and once they were outside in the brisk cold she handed him a piece of paper, explaining, "As per the rules of our agreement, in the event of the game's interruption, the leading score will be declared the winner. Bebe and I were leading, so that means we win, and you have two weeks notice to leave South Park." Cartman looked over the paper with the same cursory glance he gave it the night before and crumpled it into his pants pocket, "Fine. A deal's a deal." Wendy's gaze narrowed and she maneuvered back in front of Cartman as he tried to move away, "You're not going to try and worm your way out of this? Where are you going to go?" Cartman laughed, rocking on his heels with his hands in his pockets, "No, I'm following through. What do you care where I go?" Wendy folded her arms, "I don't. You can go to hell for all I care." Cartman nodded along, getting the picture, "I'm not going to beg to stay, because I won't give you the satisfaction, and because I don't want to stay anymore." Wendy scoffed, unfolding her arms to wind her scarf back around her neck, bracing against the cold. The four boys outside of the conversation tried not to get caught looking as they huddled awkwardly around Craig's car. Jimmy offered, "Would you fellas like to get breakfast somewhere? My treat." Tweek and Craig let the offer lie but Kenny jumped for it, "Sounds good to me." Jimmy politely asked Tweek and Craig again, "Well, what about you two?" Tweek shivered and rubbed his hands along his upper arms, "I need to go back to my shop. Oh god, I'm going to lose all of my morning customers...Maybe they broke in and made coffee for themselves..." Craig spoke up reassuringly after just a moment of hesitation, "The Closed sign will still be up from last night...They'll get over it. I can drive you there." Tweek gave a diffident smile, glad that Craig was there and treating him like a friend again, "Thank you." 

Wendy had taken her own car down, coordinating the bailout during her morning errands. She still seemed to be waiting on Cartman to say something through terse silence, but her stubbornness gave in, "Aren't you going to say thanks? Sorry? Anything?" Cartman shrugged and begrudgingly offered, "Thanks for bailing us out." Wendy dug for more, "And...?" Cartman tilted his head back and looked at the whirl of white flakes and clouds above. From this point of view it usually felt like he was stuck in a snow globe, but he felt remarkably free all the same bringing his view back down, "I'm...Sorry." Wendy pursed her lips, "What are you sorry for?" Cartman's humility was just genuine enough to throw Wendy off guard even as she expected him to explode into obscenities and indignation defending himself, the fatass offering, "Take your pick, I'm sorry for it. If you'll excuse me, I must begin preparation for my exodus." Wendy disengaged, moving for the driver's side of her car and warning, "I'm watching you, Eric." Cartman waved as Wendy got into the car and started it up, "Yeah, it's getting kinda old..." Kenny sidled up to Cartman as Wendy put the car into reverse and drove away, "That looked intense. Want to go get some pancakes with Jimmy?" Cartman mulled it over, but considered, "My mom's probably pissed off at me. I should get home before she does, pick the place up...We can have breakfast there?" Jimmy had hobbled his way over as well and caught the tail end of the offer, "Gee Eric, it would be swell of you to host for breakfast. I'd like some home cooked food I think, very much." 

Craig dropped the three off at Cartman's place and drove on to Tweek Bros. coffee. Tweek cringed to see a regular customer waiting outside, following in Craig's shadow to the locked front door. "There you are! What's the meaning of this? I'm a loyal paying customer but I had to get Harbucks this morning because--" Craig took the key Tweek was fumbling with from his hands and unlocked the door, "And we thank you for your continued patronage. Tweek Bros. is closed today, come back tomorrow." Craig pushed the two of them into the dark coffee house and shut the door in the bewildered man's face, locking up once more. There was a warm but bitter nostalgia brewing as Craig took in the silence of the shop 'after hours'. Tweek was already hustling to busy himself, making a pot of coffee. Craig looked around in the old cupboard for a certain mug until he found it, red with white lettering of the Red Racer insignia, musing, "You kept my mug here." 

Tweek grabbed a dark blue mug with a wide brim he was fond of and filled it with hot, freshly brewed coffee. "At home too, I wouldn't get rid of them." He drank from them a few times, but was embarrassed to admit it. Craig filled his cup next and they found a seat away from the windows, leaving the lights in the shop off. "The message you left me last night..." Craig asked, "What were you going to say?" Tweek hugged his hands around his coffee mug until it felt like his fingers might burn, the pressure he felt was immense and he didn't know how Craig would reply. "Sorry. I didn't mean to put you on the spot. I know what you were going to say, I just wanted to hear it..." Craig admitted, seeing the stress that made Tweek hunch over and fidget nervously. "I still love you," Tweek repeated for him in a soft exhale. Craig stood up from his seat and Tweek took a sharp inhale of breath at the sudden movement. "I do too. Love you, I mean. Still," Craig blustered to correct himself, feeling raw and exposed even in the dark corner of the coffee house alone with Tweek, used to acting so cool and placid around Clyde's friends; all of them caught up with managing their public image. Craig abruptly leaned forward and cupped Tweek's face in his hands to stamp a kiss onto his lips, Tweek clutching tightly to his coffee mug all the while. When Craig tried to pull away Tweek caught his wrists and rose to catch his retreating lips with more moist heat, intense emotions percolating between the two of them until they clumsily sat back down still joined at the lips and changing their grips to hold hands. The kiss ended mutually but they stayed hunched forward in their seats with their foreheads pressed together. "But...We need to talk more," Craig mumbled, "Like we should have last night." Tweek busied himself gently pushing back the cuticles on Craig's nails with his thumbs, "Yeah...Sorry I punched you in the face." Craig held his fuzzy vision on Tweek's eyelashes; the other male averting his eyes, "Don't be. I deserved it for what I said." Tweek turned Craig's hands in his and looked over his palms, nervously asking, "So...What do you want to talk about?" Craig's fingers gave the odd twitch as a light touch tickled over his palm, "I hate to have to ask again, but what's going on with you and Kenny?" Tweek laced their fingers together, explaining, "He just showed up out of the blue the night before last...I call him maybe once a month to buy some stuff off of him and that's all that happens. It was just that time." 

Craig withheld his derision not wanting to upset Tweek but had to add, "And that time at Token's party? Like, a year ago?" Tweek's brow knitted against Craig's forehead in confusion, "I don't remember that." Craig struggled to process this new piece of information and prodded for more, "What do you remember?" Tweek concentrated...But after a certain point his account of the night just skips forward. "I was at your house that day. Everyone got texted about a surprise birthday party for Kenny at Token's house. Clyde picked us up, we went...I got kind of bored at the party." Tweek couldn't help feeling bored at parties, that meant at least he was blocking out all of the noise and not stressing out. He wanted to hang out with Craig, but Craig had gotten too engrossed with whatever new xbox game Token had. "I bought some ecstasy off of someone and took it. T-That's all I remember. I'm sorry, you said at the party I..." Tweek felt helpless to remember any more. "It's ok," Craig grabbed Tweek's trembling hands, "Everyone makes mistakes. Just...Can you quit with the pills? And Kenny?" Tweek nodded, "Yeah, I can quit the pills. But Kenny and Cartman had this idea to make some money..." Craig firmly cut him off to caution, "You should not trust them. Especially not with money. You have a business to make money, so there's no need to get involved in one of their crazy schemes that will definitely leave you dead, broke, or in Guantanamo bay. Please, I implore you, do not get involved with one of their stupid plans." Tweek thought about it and wondered how he'd agreed to that plan in the first place. He definitely couldn't tell Craig about it. 

"What even was their plan?" Craig badgered a bit with Tweek going silent. "Look, you're right, it's a stupid plan. I'll tell them I'm not going to be involved. We can work in the shop together and make the money. Safely. Legally." Tweek gave a deep inhale and a long exhale, allowing himself to relax as the tensions in his life seemed to ravel away simultaneously. Craig was back, they were still in love, and he definitely wasn't going to get shot trying to rob a bank for Eric Cartman. Unfortunately, his moments of calm never stayed for long. "S-Should I call him now? About the plan. And his job. Oh jesus, what if..." Craig squeezed Tweek's wrists reassuringly, "Neither one of them are going to bother you, I promise. Just tell him fast and get it over with." 

Over at the Cartman household there was a furious cacophony of noises: the smoke alarm from Kenny and Jimmy in the kitchen burning some bacon, Cartman swearing while handling a vacuum cleaner, and the cat's shrill protests to it all. It was so loud that it took a few rings for Cartman to notice his phone going off, powering down the vacuum to answer, and moving somewhere to hear the voice on the other end. "Hello? Hello! Tweek? What do you want, I'm busy!" Tweek's tinny voice came through the phone with some alarm trying to imagine what must be going on at Cartman's for there to be such chaos, but Craig encouraged him to break the news fast and so he bluntly told Cartman: "I-I can't work with you and Kenny. I'm sorry. Uhm, and I'm giving your job to Craig too. I told you it was just a trial, so..." Cartman's dwindling reservoir of patience boiled and evaporated into steam, Tweek stammering a goodbye and hanging up before he could take the brunt of the fatass's anger. 

"What!? Tweek!" Cartman heard the call disconnect and looked at the screen in disbelief, crying out "Motherfucker!" before he sank down onto the carpet, sitting against the wall as the fire alarm in the kitchen finally got turned off. No crew, no cover job, fresh from a night in the drunk tank with his mom due home to tell him how 'disappointed' she was. There's an understatement. Once again, life had handed Cartman a busted off-brand xbox controller caked with cheeto dust and frankly he didn't know if he could be bothered to play anymore. "Did you smell the burnt bacon?" Kenny's body was suddenly blocking the living room ceiling light from hitting Cartman, casting him in shade. "My house never had batteries in the fire alarms so it was a bit of a farce between Jimmy and I trying to shut it off. But the pancakes look good. Big, fluffy, and sweet: just the way I like 'em. Are you okay?" Cartman rubbed roughly at his hair with his palms, knocking his hat from his head, "No...I'm fucking livid, Ken. Tweek...He walked. And fired me while he was at it. He and Craig are butt buddies again so I've been replaced." Kenny smiled in spite of Cartman's bad news, "That's great. I'm really glad for Tweek." Cartman looked up petulantly at Kenny with his palms out and open to the ceiling, "What about you and me?" Kenny bent down and tugged at Eric's elbows insistently to get him back on his feet, "Well, I'm touched that you're concerned for my well-being in addition to your own, but we'll be just fine. Before we worry about all that other stuff, we still have to eat. I'm starving." 

Kenny led Cartman to the kitchen table where they sat to eat breakfast with Jimmy. The pancakes helped, but the burnt bacon kept the dour expression on Cartman's face, especially when he found out there was no more left to try for another batch. "So, what's new with you two?" Jimmy inquired, down from the bustle of the city and shooting the breeze with the small town folk over breakfast. "Got fired from my job," Cartman mumbled between bites, taking the lion's share of pancakes with a slathering of syrup, butter, crumbled bits of burnt bacon, and a glass of milk towering beside his full plate. "I'm sorry to hear that Eric. I hope you find a new one soon," Jimmy consoled, Cartman leaning forward with his elbows on the table replying, "No point finding one here, I'm moving out in two weeks." Jimmy marveled, "Wow! Well good luck to you, you'll have to forward me to your new address for a house warming party sometime. Kenny, what about you?" Kenny reached under the table to squeeze Eric's knee, sensing that he seemed ready to curse and complain and would rather he stay pleasant during Jimmy's visit. "Oh, still working at the auto shop, though I'm thinking I'd like a change of scenery too. Butters was talking about joining us. He's not around today because he has work...And a date tonight." Cartman stabbed at his pancakes grumpily as Jimmy gave a toothy grin and replied, "Ooh-da-lalee! You know, I had a date myself recently, and it went over pretty well; or at least I thought it did. She texted me the next day and said, 'come on over, there's nobody home'. So I went over, but when I got there nobody was home." Kenny laughed but the joke did nothing for Cartman; Jimmy still adding, "Thank you, what a terrific audience."

Sensing that Cartman needed some space, once Jimmy was finished eating he spoke up to say, "I really enjoyed having breakfast with you guys, but I've got a few more people in town I wanted to visit. Would you mind driving me to my friend Tim-Tim's?" Cartman gathered up the dishes but Kenny took them from him to the sink to rinse off himself. "Yeah, just let me grab a few things," Cartman announced his departure from the kitchen, "Meet me outside by the wagon." Cartman lugged a heavy black duffel bag outside to the car and Kenny gave him a hard stare down that evaporated when Jimmy looked his way, obliviously chattering mentioning everyone he'd like to visit if he had the time before the weekend ended. They bid him adieu at Timmy's place and Kenny took shotgun before they pulled back out of the driveway, heading for the city limits. "Cartman, I know you're pissed off, and that is exactly why we should not try to knock down a liquor store right now." Cartman briefly casted Kenny a sideways glance to ask, "How did you know it would be a liquor store?" Kenny slumped in his seat, digging through the glove box for the pack of cigarettes he left there, rolling down the window once he'd lit up to breathe out lungfuls of poison. "Because they're hit the most often by robbers. Besides, we're out, and you probably want something to mollify your mother." Cartman gave a gimme motion with his hand to Kenny for a cigarette, a rare indulgence, but Kenny turned him down; saying, "You've got bad enough cardiovascular health as it is." Cartman barked out to refute him, "You're still giving me cancer second hand, dickhead! Throw the pack or give me one." 

Kenny held onto the pack covetously. He looked between it and Cartman's outstretched hand, asking for a taste of death. Kenny crushed the package in his fist and tossed it out the window, saying, "I'll just finish this one off." Eric huffed and grumbled, flipping on the window wipers as snow buffeted against the windshield, "I stink like a smoker and I don't even get the benefit of smoking it. Are you almost finished? I'm freezing my ass off." Kenny took a deep drag and let the stub of what remained fly from between his fingers out the window to fall in a puddle of sleet by the side of the highway. Kenny rolled the window up and ate a mint before leaning over to plant a kiss against Eric's ear and give him a shiver, teasing, "There are other benefits." Cartman tugged at his collar feeling a surge of heat from the close contact and the air conditioning in the car. "When I have to go...Will you go with me?" Eric didn't know what he'd do without him, so he looked quite alarmed when Kenny replied, "Hmm...I Dunno." Kenny leaned on Eric and soothed his anxiety, "Hey, I'm just kidding. Mostly. You know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men...I don't mind following you, provided you can pull your own weight." Kenny squeezed a roll of fat on Cartman's side and made him yelp, "Ay! I'm still trying to drive!"


	5. Chapter 5

Hours later and far removed from the grungy downtown liquor stores; in the lounge of an up-scale hotel, a young man sat alone at the bar looking slightly out of place and noticeably nervous. He had on some brown loafers, navy blue ankle socks, white chinos, and a faded nectarine long sleeve shirt. well-dressed and well-mannered, but he drew some looks for the punk rock shock of blonde hair rising from the center of a conservatively clipped cut, and for the unsightly vertical scar over his left eye. He had a water and half of a fuzzy navel resting in a glass full of melting ice in front of him on the bartop; ankles crossed, feet not touching the floor, hands in his lap, kneading his knuckles together as he waited for his date to show up. He had so much occupying his mind, but the local newscaster on the tv above the bar suddenly caught his attention mentioning: "Two men in sweatsuits and hockey masks robbed a liquor store today at roughly 1pm just outside of Buena Vista, Colorado. They knocked out the clerk, 35-year old co-owner Charles Mendel, as he was moving stock from the back room. Security cameras did not capture the robbers on film, but they were seen by a customer walking in on the act who wishes to remain anonymous. With a gun pointed at the customer, they were directed to throw aside their phone and crouch in the corner until the robbers had finished. Police looked for the robbers, but did not find them or any evidence at the scene. Still at large, the suspects..." Butters stared agape at the screen and was greatly startled by a touch to his shoulder. He turned his head, eyes wide in surprise, and became terribly embarrassed that after all this time waiting he hadn't noticed when Bradley finally arrived.

His sudden and immediate proximity made him flush and stammer, "Oh, Bradley! I'm sorry!" Bradley had withdrawn his hand when Butters jumped in surprise, but took a seat beside him With a giddy smile Bradley replied, "No, I'm sorry, I'm late aren't I? I'm still technically wearing my work clothes..." Butters saw an invitation to let his eyes roam over his date. Bradley had on dress clothes and shined shoes, all in black like the other hosts here at the hotel, with short and fluffy blonde curls of hair topping his head. He was very tall and thin with a slender, narrow face; but his forearms looked toned and strong as Bradley rolled up his sleeves and asked for a water from the bar. "You seemed pretty engrossed watching the news," Bradley commented, "I thought you said it was too boring or too sad for you to watch." Butters felt like he'd blown a fuse and sparked a few times trying to get his brain working again, "Well, it is, but I guess it caught my attention for a little bit. Are you hungry for dinner after workin' all day?" Bradley nodded along, sipping from a glass of water he'd been given before responding, "I'm famished. Are you really ok, though? You look shaken." Butters prattled in a flustered tone, "Well, I'm okay, it's just..." Butters never was good at telling a lie. He'd really rather not lie to anyone. Most of the times in his life that he'd lied he was covering up for Eric...He wouldn't lie to Bradley. But as Cartman said, if you can't afford to lie, be choosy with the truths you tell. Butters explained, "The news report made me worried for my friend, Eric." Bradley knew there was something more than what Butters had said initially, so he was relieved to have him explain. Clarifying, Bradley asked, "Eric...Cartman? He's the fat one who's always getting into trouble? You could just give him a call." Butters had censored himself when talking about his life in his letters to Bradley, but he had shared some of the more harmless anecdotes about Cartman's plans that he would rope him and Kenny into. Butters fished out his phone with an apologetic expression, "Sorry, I'm sure I'm just overreacting..." Butters held the phone up to his ear after hitting the contact number for Eric. It was hard to look at Bradley. He was trusting Butters and it made him feel guilty as the ringing phone relayed in his ear.

"Helloo?," a mature woman's voice answered the call, sultry with a sugar coating, belonging to none other than Liane Cartman. Butters stammered, "Miss Cartman, is Eric at home?" Liane chided Butters, "I told you to call me Liane, Mister Butterscotch. My Eric and his special friend Kenny are making me dinner, I'm so lucky. Won't you come by too?" Butters wasn't one hundred percent sure, but it sounded like Liane was drunk. "Well, I'm actually on a date right now Liane, we were talking about where to get dinner," Butters floundered before Cartman's mother interrupted, "Oh, how fun! Bring him too, I'll have a full house of handsome boys then. Bye Bye, Leopold." The phone went dead and Butters stared at his phone in his palm. Bradley tilted his head, "What did your friend's mother say?" Butters tucked away his phone before responding, "Well, she invited us over for dinner..." He wanted to have a word with Cartman anyway, so maybe this could work out. "Well, we can't turn her down, that would be rude," Bradley asserted, rising from his bar stool. Butters left what meager tip he could offer on the counter, asking, "You don't mind...?" Bradley's smile and optimism hadn't faltered once, taking Butters arm in arm on their walk out to the lobby and the parking lot outside, expressing, "We'd talked about having dinner at the hotel, I know...But I've tasted everything on the menu already anyway. Having dinner with your friends sounds fun. Later, after that..." Butters beamed, getting into his car with Bradley. He had the house to himself that evening, and after dinner he had a few plans in store for his date. "After that..? Bradley, I'm surprised," Butters teased, "You're having impure thoughts?" The engine of the modest economy car came to life, Butters taking the wheel as Bradley balked at the implication, defending himself, "I just meant we'd have time to ourselves!" Butters leapt to make Bradley feel more secure, "I guess I'm the one with his head in the gutter...It's not a bad thought though. I think it's a really good one." Bradley smiled bashfully and undid the top button of his collar to breathe better. "I think so too," Bradley replied, "I've had these confusing feelings for a long time, but when you're near me like this they make sense." Butters smiled and set aside his problems for the rest of the car ride. He and Bradley hadn't spent much time together in person, but corresponding so often it felt like really knew each other. Their first date together was going swimmingly and it confirmed to Butters that he ought to pursue a relationship with his admirer. They'd share some dinner, he'd have a quick word with Cartman telling him to stop taking risks, and then he could spend the rest of the night trying to get closer to the gangly blonde next to him without worrying about his friends getting killed.

Back at the Cartman estate, Eric brandished a bulky kitchen knife at Kenny, slurring his speech with his brow furrowed intensely. "Kenny...If you dip your fingers into that pot one more time, I'm gonna fucking gut you. I'm gonna slash you across the belly, yank out your intestines, and fashion them into garters. I am so seriously." Kenny snickered and fell against Eric as they both attended to a dinner in progress on the stove, giving his approval, "Well, in case you were wondering, it tastes great." Kenny got that look in his eyes and craned his head down to firmly kiss Eric on the lips. The pair melted under the warmth of the kiss, bubbling and melding flavors just as the meal over the range did. Liane's voice called from the living room and briefly pulled the two apart announcing, "Poopsiekins, Butters and his date are coming to dinner!" Eric sighed, watching Kenny tug at the front of his apron. "Alright, mom!" Cartman replied in exasperation, setting his knife on the counter. Liane added on, "Could you bring Mommy some more of that nice red wine, pumpkin?" Kenny peeled away from Eric with a clumsy pat on the shoulder, grabbing the bottle to take to Eric's mother. The bottle was just about finished between the three of them drinking and a generous portion going into the meal itself. Kenny focused to keep from wobbling too much on his walk to the living room and poured Liane some more, leaving the dregs at the bottom of the bottle. "I'm pumpkin, right?" Kenny asked with a smile, pointing out his loud orange getup.

Ms.Cartman's lips were getting wine-stained now, with the rim of her glass wearing a few prints of her dark red lipstick. "Oh, you're both pumpkins," Liane cooed, taking her drink as she lounged on the couch. She hadn't been too upset at Eric about being in the drunk tank after Kenny explained the situation with Tweek. They hadn't mentioned that Cartman was out of a job again; but a clean house, a hot dinner, and good wine greased the wheels. Liane was a happy drunk, an affectionate drunk. She hugged Kenny to her bosom and ruffled his dirty blonde hair. Sometimes his parents were affectionate like this under the influence, but usually not. Kenny gave Liane a hug back. His own mother had to spend so much time keeping her husband under supervision that he would indulge when his friends' mothers doted on him. The difference with Liane was that her doting concern felt genuine. She understood his struggles. He remembered one uncomfortably cold night in the rockies, they both found each other walking under the light-posts, looking for work they weren't proud of. They shared cigarettes and took the bus home together in the early morning. He promised he wouldn't go out there again, and had stuck to his word hoping she'd do the same. He'd already convinced Butters and Eric before then that that line of work wasn't an option, but for months after until he saw Liane he didn't hold himself to the same standard. 

Liane's nails scratched pleasingly over his scalp and Kenny realized he'd slumped onto the couch beside her. "I'll take good care of him, Liane," Kenny mumbled. If Kenny at least hadn't stuck by Eric he didn't know who would have. Considering his options for the next two weeks, he decided to support Cartman. He could sense a transformation taking place, and he was committed to seeing it through. It had been awhile since Kenny himself was optimistic or affectionate under the influence. Usually it made him moody, filled him with scorn for people just acting full of love and life from intoxication. It reminded him of Stan too much. He only ever felt like he'd had a chance when the two of them were alone and drunk. The old flame he had for Stan, and the old flame Cartman had for Kyle. It kept Kenny and Cartman from getting too close; it made them feel self conscious about being the other's 'runner up', and about being a pitable pair of burnouts nursing each other's wounds. However, those feelings were changing. Stan was a thing of the past. He was just a symbol for something wholesome that used to fill Kenny with yearning. Kenny wasn't sure how Cartman felt about Kyle, but he didn't feel like just a replacement anymore. He felt appreciated by someone that everyone else said couldn't appreciate anything.

"I know you will, Kenny. Thank you," Liane pinched the poor boy's cheek before he lurched off of the couch and returned to the kitchen to redirect his huggy attentions to Cartman: winding his arms around his shoulders and resting his chin on the top of Eric's head to watch him stir the pot on the stove. "Your mother seems properly placated as you expected," Kenny comments, "But that's the last time we roll over a liquor store and offer her stolen goods. Next time...We're buying the wine ourselves." Cartman exhaled with some consternation but relented, "Fine, but we probably will only be able to afford the boxed stuff in the near future." Kenny craned his face down and around to nuzzle against Eric's chubby cheek, "No, we'll be buying the good stuff, and we'll fit it into the budget somehow. A nice moving away dinner before we say farewell to South Park." Cartman sweated over the stove with an orange cloak hanging over him, muttering as he wiped his brow, "Good riddance."

Butters pointed out the view of the small mountain town on the horizon, "There it is. My home. I'm awfully eager to leave it behind, but at the same time I'll be sad to go." Bradley had the seat all the way back and his shoes temporarily kicked off, tired from being on his feet all day, asking Butters, "Where do yo want to move to?" Butters was quick to answer, "Some place warm. If I had the money of course...As it is, I probably won't go far..." He thought fondly about Hawaii and he wasn't shy about inserting Bradley into his fantasy now, flying to their summer house in Hawaii from work in Paris or Los Angeles. "I know how you feel," Bradley was pulled down by the gravity of reality. He had majored in Religious studies and kept his nose to the grindstone working all throughout the year at a hotel being managed by a family friend, wanting to get away from his parents who expected him to no longer be 'confused' about what he wanted in life. He'd never given into vice or temptation before, but if a devil offered him a fast track out of his problems he'd be hard pressed to say no. "It...It's too bad that so much depends on money, you know?" Bradley offered a meek smile to Butters who humbly muttered back his agreement. They had discussed it some in letters, but there was more that Butters wanted to have money for than just a place to stay or an end to his loans. Only Bradley, Kenny, and Cartman really knew about it. The sooner he could take the first step to pursuing that goal the better. If Butters received the same offer from a devil it would be hard to resist.

Bradley comments with some renewed levity as Butters parks the car by the street outside of Cartman's lime green 2-story home, "The houses in your neighborhood sure do have...Interesting color choices." Butters points at his own house practically next door, "That identical house there is mine. I like to think of the color as clay and not poop like Eric says." The pair get out of the car and walk to the front door, Bradley lamenting, "We should have brought something...I guess it's too late now." Noticing them from the window, Liane throws open the door before her guests can knock, bowling them over with a gust of warmth. "Hurry inside, dinner's waiting!" Getting them into the house and closing the front door she all but forces Butters to hand over his coat while introducing herself to Bradley. Cartman's already seated at the head of the table and dishing out portions, first to Kenny sitting at his right, and then to himself; taking sly glances at Butters and his mystery date. To Cartman, Bradley looked honest, earnest, and modest. A real bore. Probably vanilla in the bedroom, if not a virgin, overall sexually repressed. Kenny struggled to maintain decorum and not start eating right away. Noticing Cartman staring so analytically across the room at Bradley, Kenny kicked him in the shin under the cover of the table, "Be nice." Cartman hissed under his breath as Liane and the fresh arrivals moved for the table, "I'm always nice, until someone pisses me off."

Butters and Bradley sat opposite of Kenny and Liane, Butters introducing his date to the table, "This is Bradley. Now, what's for dinner?" The guests had been wondering about it the whole drive over. "Is it Coq au vin?" Bradley inquired, taking in the smells of bacon, mushrooms, wine, and chicken; looking at the plates already served. Whole pearl onions and thick wedges of carrots were also present in the thick brown stew served with red potatoes. Eric tried not to get irritated at Bradley for robbing him of the chance of introducing his dish as he mashed at his potatoes with his fork. "Yes, that is correct, Bradley. A streamlined recipe from Julia Child's kitchen." Butters served himself and Bradley, the table tucking in together. "Ahh, it's so wonderful having company. And my boy is such a good cook," Liane comments fondly. Bradley agrees once he's had a bite of the braised chicken, just as good as the stuff they serve at the hotel with a more genuine appeal of home cooking, "It really is prepared very well. You don't work as a chef?" Eric grimaces and Kenny grasps his hand, explaining, "Cartman's the type who won't settle for anything less than head chef. Or manager...Or being the head chef and the manager. Basically he doesn't like being told what to do." Butters tittered in agreement as Eric brusquely replied, "There are no real restaurants in South Park. Italian, Chinese, or French they're all managed by white hicks. I couldn't get a reference from any of them, even Taco Bell."

Butters got a quaint sense of glee seeing Eric and Kenny holding hands out of the blue and snatched up one of Bradley's wanting the same. Kenny reminisced, "Remember the time that new-age cult poisoned the salad bar at Buca di Fagiolini's and you got fired because you told the interviewer for the evening news whoever ate from the salad bar deserved it?" Cartman staunchly defended his longstanding hatred of bland salads, "They did! Wasn't the only place in town they poisoned either. I'm glad for it, I think people are wising up to the dangers of salad bars." Bradley looked quite shocked, "Why did they poison the salad bars? Did this make the news?" Liane took a turn to field a question, wanting to distract herself from thinking how it'd be nice to have someone holding her hand as well. "They were trying to stop people from voting so they could rig an election in favor of their leader, I think. Most things that go on in South Park go on unreported...That's just the nature of remote little towns like this." Mr.Kitty the Second made the rounds under the table, meowing and nuzzling legs trying for scraps of chicken. It got head rubs for it's trouble, eventually landing in Kenny's lap after enough circle eights around the chairs circling the dinner table. Butters and Bradley offered to do the dishes to make up for not bringing anything and Cartman was happy to oblige them, always making a mess and hating to clean it up himself. Liane kissed Cartman on the cheek and started swaying for the stairs to go to her room, "Good night sugar bear, Mommy's feeling quite tired now." Cartman replied with a perfunctory, "Good night, mom," letting out a deep breath and sinking in his seat once she was gone. He hadn't shared his two weeks notice yet for leaving town, but he could pull that off in the morning.

Mr. Kitty scampered out of Kenny's lap as he moved his seat back to stand from his chair, taking a stretch. "Well, it's awfully late..." Cartman looked up in surprise at Kenny's announcement, asking, "And...?" Kenny shrugged, "And I thought I'd just spend the night here if that's alright with you." Cartman blinked and uttered, "Oh," embarrassed to have fretted so obviously thinking Kenny was going home for the night. "Yeah, that's alright with me." Kenny had on a smug grin and looked ready to pounce on Eric before Butters and Bradley returned to the dining room. Butters whined, "You don't need to use that many dishes when cooking, Eric...!" Cartman had stuffed himself full of the rich meal and stayed slumped in his seat petulantly contrasting everyone else standing, "I'll use as many dishes as I damn well please. How'd you end up here for dinner anyway?" Butters wondered how to breach the subject now; sending off Bradley seemed too suspicious, but could he smoothly explain how he'd been an accomplice to multiple bank robberies in the past? "I called your house phone and the next thing I knew your mom invited us over. Talking on the phone would have been easier, we don't have to do it now." Cartman raised an eyebrow, inquiring, "What is it?" Butters sighed in exasperation, and Bradley added on this his stress asking, "You said you wanted to call him after you saw that news story about a robbery at a liquor store?" Once the question was out there Bradley could sense the tension ratcheting up all at once from everyone else in the room. "Cartman was talking about a job in a liquor store downtown...And they get robbed a lot," Butters covered slyly, "I just wanted to tell him to get a safer job than that."

Kenny was relieved for the easy out Butters offered, but Cartman further instigated, "I'll take any job I can get. I need the money. And soon. I'll probably do some work under the table for the mayor again." Kenny and Butters exchanged knowing glances. Their fence, their money launderer, and their sometimes criminal mastermind Mayor McDaniels kept the small town out of perpetual bankruptcy from regular catastrophes with numerous ties to organized crime, reaching out as far as the Yakuza in their Japanese sister city. She offered structure and good pay, but the work was invariably much more dangerous, and Cartman hated taking orders. "You and Kenny talked this over, huh?" Butters wrung his hands, not knowing what to do. Kenny frowned and folded his arms, "That's news to me...But Eric's right, a job's a job if it pays." Bradley looked between the three as he flailed with confusion. "What sort of work is it?" Cartman warned, "Nothing for boy scouts. You and Butters can stay out of it." Eric pushed out his chair ready to guide the guests to the door for the evening. "How much does it pay?" Bradley asked and drew Cartman's ire further, looking at him in disbelief. "Never matter how much it pays. Butters, what have you been telling your little boyfriend?" Butters stammered too quickly, "I didn't tell him anything!" Kenny tried to ease, "Hey, let's not wake Ms.Cartman, huh? We should call it a night, talk more over breakfast maybe?"

Cartman sneered, getting the sense that Bradley was playing the hero when he stepped between him and Butters. Bradley thought about the flimsy story Butters gave him to explain the big bruise on his back he got 'from work' with his friends. The news story...The way Butters reacted..."Dangerous work, is it?" Cartman nodded, "Yeah, it's dangerous work. When Butters helped we pulled in a lot more pay too. We went from seven thousand dollar gigs to one thousand dollar gigs." Bradley's eyes went wide at the figures. "Seven thousand dollars?" A three-way takeaway of over two grand. He took nearly half that in a month working forty hours a week. Kenny moved to grip Cartman's arm tightly as the alcohol was making him obstinate, "That's enough, you've already said too much," he muttered quietly. Cartman scoffed, "If you want to blame someone for that, blame Butters." Butters bowed his head, "I'm sorry. Bradley, let's go." Bradley lagged getting dragged toward the front door, "Someone has to tell me what this is all about. Butters...?" Butters explained, "I already quit because it was too risky. Money's no good if you get really hurt in the end..." Bradley put a palm to his forehead, "Sorry. I don't know what came over me. It just sounded like this big secret, and there was so much money at stake...If you had that you could..."

Cartman moved to the door to usher the two interlopers outside, "If we have a need for two more pairs of hands, and it's not too dangerous; maybe I'll send you an offer, but Kenny and I have got it under control for now, thank you." Butters and Bradley stood awkwardly out in the snow with the door closing behind them. A very awkward ending to their warm and cozy supper. "Are we going to talk about this more...? As your accountabilibuddy I feel like we ought to...But as a boyfriend, I could give you some space." Butters looped his arm into Bradley's and dragged him toward his ugly clay-colored house, "Well, as a boyfriend, I would like to be open with you...I'm just worried about how you might react." They left the lights off inside the Stotch house and fumbled their way upstairs in the dark. "Butters...You saved my life at that camp. There's next to nothing you could do that would convince me you weren't a good person." Butters forgot all about giving Bradley the tour of the house, just pulling him along to his bedroom to get into bed together. "Oh, hamburgers..." Butters mumbled, ready to rip off the bandaid and get it over with by admitting: "We used to rob banks. Small stuff. Nothing the bank wasn't insured for by the government. I got shot in the back on our last job. If I hadn't been wearing a vest I would have died. That's why I quit." Bradley gingerly laid his palm over Butters's back, laying chest to chest beside him. "That's...You definitely shouldn't do that anymore." Butters nodded, "I agree. I don't know how Cartman can live so recklessly, but I've followed him long enough. I just wanted to tell him to stop because he's my friend, but clearly he's too stubborn or too desperate for the money." Bradley gently thumbed over Butters's left cheek, feeling the ridge of his scar. Butters had so much loyalty for those rough-looking crooks...The fat chef with cruel eyes like an eagle, and his shrewd dirty-blonde lover that reeked of wine and cigarettes. He must see something in them, something he hadn't seen quite yet.

"I'll pray for them," Bradley offers, "Do you think they'll be okay?" Butters felt up Bradley's hair, smiling as kisses were stamped over the top and bottom of his scar, "I think so...They're a real couple of die-hards, after all. Even if things got a bit tense, I'm glad you could meet them. I wish I could introduce you to Stan and Kyle too. They're definitely more your speed. Nothing crazy or dangerous going on with them." Bradley listened on and progressively relaxed more. Butters wasn't in danger, and even if his friends were rough, their position was to keep him out of harm's way. "It must have been hard for you to keep all that stuff from me. I understand why, but I promise I'll always keep your secrets." Butters hugged Bradley to him and rolled in bed, pinning himself underneath him. "Thanks, Bradley. I promise to keep yours too. And I'll share from now on. I just thought it was a bad piece of conversation for the first date..." Bradley mused, "It's surprising...I can hardly imagine you doing that stuff." Butters playfully rolled in bed some more to put himself on top, "Shucks, it was just sort of a role...Like...'Stick 'em up!'," Butters pointed at Bradley with his index finger with his thumb cocked up above it, giving a catty grin as Bradley put up his hands. "And if the bank teller was as especially handsome as you were, maybe bank robber Butters would tie him up and make him a hostage..."

Cartman tried to ignore Kenny seething in his ear as they went upstairs, "Is this a game to you? What the fuck was that just now?" Cartman closed the two of them off in his room, remaining decidedly blasé responding, "Bradley isn't going to tell anyone anything. They both want the work, I could tell. But the Mayor wants professionals who aren't squeamish. That's us. I assure you, I'm taking this very seriously." Kenny stared Eric down and was taken aback when he apologized, "I'm sorry for losing for my temper. Bradley was getting too curious. And since no one decided to tell me about him I was a little irritated." Kenny plopped into bed after Eric, asking, "What's it matter to you that Butters is dating?" Cartman kicked off his pants and socks, "I'm his friend aren't I? I deserve a chance to rip on him for going out with a total melvin." Kenny shrugged out of his shirt and slithered out of his pants, spreading out over the covers with a chuckle, "They're both total melvins. It's cute." Cartman threw a leg and an arm up over Kenny like he usually did with his pillows, cuddling against his side. He'd sorely missed being in bed with him. "Whatever. Screw Butters and Bradley. And Craig and Tweek. We're the cutest." Kenny brushed out Eric's hair with his right hand, feeling warm and welcome, "I think your mother would agree. We're the cutest pair of pumpkins in the whole patch." Cartman groaned and buried his face against Kenny's ribs, "If you ever call me a pumpkin again, I'll scoop out your brains with a fucking melon baller and put a candle in the empty space between your ears."


	6. Chapter 6

Butters only ever got to sleep in when his parents were out of the house. He considered himself a morning person by a strict force of habit, but he couldn't deny how nice it was to wake up, roll over in indignation, and fall back asleep for a while longer. He was smiling wide with his eyes closed, and moved to cozy back next to Bradley. He found to his distress that Bradley was missing from the warmth of the bed. Further distressing was the sound of voices downstairs. Counting three voices in all, his fuzzy warm feelings burst into a violent fright, and he realized that his parents were home. He hurriedly dressed himself with the same urgency as a fire fighter out of bed for an alarm. He gripped the bannister rounding out of his room to the stairs and tried to quietly storm down them to get to the fire in time. He saw his mother, father, and Bradley in the kitchen drinking coffee. His parents looked at him with condemnation, but Bradley managed to look composed, and it boggled his mind as to how that could be.

"Butters!"

There goes his father, ready to crucify him for being a sinful waste of a son..."Bradley tells me you're late for volunteer work at the church! Is that right?"

Butters stammered, trying to get a jump going in his brain as it struggled to switch gear into reverse. "Huh? Oh, well, uh, I guess I did sleep in...I'm sorry Bradley." His father interrupted before the apology could be accepted, "Don't apologize to Bradley, Butters, apologize to God! He doesn't take kindly to Tardy Teddies."

Butters looked up at the ceiling. "Uh...Shucks, I'm awful sorry, God." Stephen Stotch folded his arms and gave a curt nod of his head, affirming, "That's better." Linda sighed at Butters, pouring herself more coffee and secretly pining for a cigarette. "Why can't you be more like Bradley? He's punctual, well-dressed, well- mannered, god-fearing..." She went on, but Butters payed her little mind and looked over at Bradley with a grateful expression. If they had been caught off guard he'd probably be thrown out on the street.

"Since we're late as it is, why don't we see about bringing your friends to volunteer as well?" Bradley started moving for the door and Stephen saw them out, concurring, "That's a good idea, those friends of his could stand to go to church more often!" Butters followed after, waving to his parents who seemed to be willfully suspending their disbelief regarding the whole affair.

Once they were out of sight and out of mind to his parents, Butters took a firm grasp of Bradley's hand and gave him a stern gaze to follow. "I appreciate you getting us out of a sticky situation, but I don't like lying." Bradley was quick to offer, "Then we can go volunteer like I said we would. They didn't ask if I had just been in bed with you after all, so I didn't quite lie to them." Butters didn't let him off the hook, not so quickly. "It was dishonest. I want to tell them the truth." Butters said as much but he knew that was easier said than done.

Bradley assured him, "We can tell them the truth, but don't think about burning that bridge until you've crossed it first." It was his father's stubbornness and fair-weather evangelism that kept him from being himself and it irritated him to no end. His father knew he was far beyond being bi-curious, but as long as he was 'under his roof' it would not be tolerated; his right to food, water, and shelter leveraged against his desire to self-actualize. Worst of all, he was being a cock block.

"You're right," Butters begrudged before moving on. "Anyway, I don't think Kenny or Cartman are going to want to go to church. Cartman heard some people saying not nice things about his mom, and Kenny says he doesn't believe praying in church does anyone any good." Bradley was taken aback at how much Butters forgave from his jaded friends, but could sympathize, "I'm quite tired of attending service myself, but I still feel good volunteering. You're sure they couldn't pitch in?" Butters wrung his hands together awkwardly, "Well, besides not wanting to go, they have been banned from our community's church..."

Bradley had to know those thieves weren't the sort to prey on churches, so he asked, "What did they do?" Butters whispered over to Bradley despite being alone with him out on the sidewalk, "Eric convinced Kenny to, uh...Fool around with him in the confessional." Bradley gave an honest laugh and hid the lower half of his face behind his hand, having thought of something similar, but not imagining ever going through with it. "So they snuck in after hours, and...?" Butters corrected, "No, it was during confessional." Bradley's jaw dropped, awed at the sheer audacity of their godlessness, unable to ask any more. It made Butters burn at the ear as well, recalling the story's fine details; after getting through a few confessions under heavy, bated breath, the sounds from the other side of the confessional got a bit too blatant and Father Maxy threw open the compartment door to reveal Kenny Mccormick performing fellatio on Eric Cartman. "Well, they are certainly not going to church with us then," Bradley settled.

Without a morning job to go to, Cartman stayed in bed, adhered to Kenny's torso in a firm embrace. He applied some squeezing pressure when he felt his bed-mate try to pull away, threatening the warm and cozy environment that had lasted through the night. "Where are you going," Cartman admonished in an impetuous tone. "I'm awake, and I smell weed smoke, so I'm going to go mooch off your mom." Kenny managed to sit up, and was turning to step out of bed as Cartman hung in vain about his waist, hissing, "Fucking weak! You stoner asshole!" Kenny freed himself and threw on one of Eric's plus-size night robes before going to visit Liane. Cartman kicked and flailed, burrowing back into the comforter in hopes of salvaging his pleasant sleep-in, but he could hear the impact of the door knocker downstairs.

"Mom! Somebody's at the door! Kenny!" Cartman shouted for someone else to attend to it, but his mother responded, "Go and answer it yourself, poopsie-kins." Struck with how unjust and uncaring the universe was, Cartman kept the blanket about himself as he got out of bed to trail downstairs in his boxers, flinging open the door to find none other than last night's dinner guests, Butters and Bradley. They looked quite surprised to see Cartman at the door in such a state, which Cartman found quite rude, considering they were the ones who had come over unannounced.

"Good morning, Eric," Butters placated, "We, uh...Thought we'd see if you would have us over for breakfast after serving us such a nice supper last night." Cartman took this visit to mean they had spent more time thinking about his offer, and invited them in. "Tell you what: you can show your appreciation by cooking me breakfast. I'm going back up to my room to sleep in a little longer. You know where the pancake fixings are, Butters." The gracious host turned his back to the front door and dragged himself upstairs, leaving Butters and his bewildered date to fend for themselves. Bradley followed Butters into the kitchen, questioning the enabling of Cartman's slothfulness. "Are you really going to make him breakfast?"

Butters made himself at home in the kitchen, speaking as he rifled through the pantry, "Shucks Bradley, you're the person I want to make pancakes for. But I wouldn't mind some help, since there needs to be enough for six or seven people." Bradley followed the instructions for the dry mix as Butters put together the electric stand-up mixer, puzzled enough to ask, "There are only five of us in the house." Butters explained, "Well, one of us is Cartman, and someone upstairs is smoking dope too."

Liane exhaled out of her frosted bedroom window and called to Eric between a pair of small coughs, "Who was at the door, honey bear?" Cartman didn't bother to break stride to his room, explaining, "Butters and Bradley. They're in the kitchen now, making breakfast." Kenny took his turn breathing pales of white smoke out into the snowfall and coughing, "I love breakfast..." Liane agreed, "Oh, me too. It's so nice of little Butters and his new boyfriend to make it for us all." Liane stashed the glass bong (an ornate piece three feet in height) beside the night stand before returning to sit comfortably at the foot of her bed, wearing a silky lavender-colored night gown.

Kenny took stock of the high he was feeling, identifying the potent hybrid bud as a product of Token Black's professional heat lamps over hydroponics set-up. Kenny's own meticulously bred cross-strain may be less precisely manicured, and sometimes laden with spider mites, but he would never accept that his sun-kissed and home-grown weed was any less in value that his competitor's. With a chip on his shoulder as the poorest kid anyone knew in town, losing to the richest kid at anything was a tender spot for him.

"You're staring off into space Kenny, are you alright?" Liane laughed at Kenny's bout of stony silence. "I was just thinking about this singing contest from senior year of high school." Liane put a hand on Kenny's back, noticing the bitter arch in his brow, "What about it?" Kenny straightened up, embarrassed to be so obvious and to be upset about it now in the first place. "Well, I didn't win. I always felt like I should have." He had teared up while singing Con te Partiro with such feeling, and then Token waltzed up in a flashy suit to sing some Tom Jones number for first place. A good performance by a good singer, but he wondered if the judges were swayed more by the pizazz than anything else.

"Oh, you know that was a popularity contest, and Token's parents had donated to the school's fund for a new theater wing that Summer. Little Eric and Stanley were quite upset about losing too, but you three showed everyone your lovely singing voices and you should be proud."

Kenny chuckled at hearing this, because he couldn't bear to admit to Liane that he didn't think Cartman's singing was ever very good. He had energy and presence, but his sloppy technique left him a rank amateur that performed best in the acoustics of a shower stall. Stan wasn't much better given his demure presence and projection; another amateur best suited to strumming on a guitar and bashfully serenading to one person. Kenny's father had dashed his own dreams of being a singer. He liked being a pot farmer and a mechanic in equal measure, but it wasn't what he lived for. He'd never felt more alive than when he'd been singing in Romania, and the closest rush he could get since came during a good high or his crime sprees with Eric. Liane scratched her dark red nails over Kenny's scalp and told him she understood his disappointment, but there was no need to hold onto it.

It was a positive message, but it rang partly sad. From what he knew about Liane's life before South Park, she had dreams of acting or modelling, and fell in with the wrong crowd until she could slink away to South Park, a frigid and resentful podunk hovel shadowed by the Rockies. Similar to prayers, Kenny was thinking that dreams didn't do anyone any good either. They weren't fluffy passing shapes casting cooling shade on hot days. Dreams made a bridge of ice to a life you imagine you'd like to have. Every failed dream made a crack in the ice, and a crack in the ice made you doubt your next step. One hopeless dream pushed too far would put you under. The scope of the dreams he had privately, and the scope of the dreams he shared with Cartman were beginning to melt; if they didn't make a leap soon the gap to reaching shore would become unreachable.

"You think too much when you're on that grass, young man." Liane chided, sensing Kenny's lingering despondency. "Why don't you go see if Eric's ready to wake up? I'm going to make some coffee, and then I'm going to make that Bradley boy blush with a dirty joke. I can tell he's just the sort to get embarrassed over that. Do you have a good one I can share?" Liane was always partial to Kenny's juvenile, blue-toned humor and Kenny did not want to disappoint now. He considered the context and was lucky to have a good old fashioned joke come to mind for the occasion. "What's green and smells like bacon?" Liane's gaze narrowed with doped concentration, "Green bacon...?" Kenny flatly delivered the punchline: "Kermit's fingers." Liane clapped a hand over her mouth and laughed enough to snort, "Yes, that's just perfect. I better go down before I forget..." Liane broke the feeling of bed lock and got up to head down to the kitchen in her robe and slippers, leaving Kenny to wake up Cartman for a second time.

"You're being pretty stubborn about getting out of bed," Kenny admired from the doorway of Eric's bedroom. Cartman made no move from where he lay sprawled on the bed, watching Kenny disrobe and move to the closet, grumbling, "You're being pretty stubborn about not staying in bed, how's that?" Kenny found the crumpled blue uniform he left last time now cleaned and suspended from a clothes-hanger, ready for him to throw on and look presentable to work for once, "Thanks for cleaning this." "Whatever. I'm not just going to leave it on my floor, am I?" Cartman rolled onto his back and tried to make the bed look inviting but Kenny wasn't biting. "You should clean up, put on a suit," Kenny recommended, "Look professional and all that for the mayor." Cartman countered, "You should clean up too," which brought Kenny to his bedside with an outstretched hand. Eric picked a charcoal colored suit from his closet once he was up, and the two snuck nude into the bathroom, hanging their clothes by the door before getting into the shower.

Liane had a fit of laughs embarrassing Bradley with jokes, and sharing stories about a young Butters. She got coffee and a pancake without lifting a finger and took up the work of carrying conversation. "I'm sorry if I infringed on your date by inviting you over to dinner last night, I got a little carried away is all...!" Bradley told her earnestly she didn't have to apologize, they had a good time after all. He wondered how such a sweet mother brought up such a brusque heathen as Cartman. Liane turned her head to the stairs hearing the shower running, "That must be my busy man, finally out of bed. How is he going to find a job at that pace, hm?"

With Kenny presumably upstairs in the shower too, Bradley looked to Butters with some amazement. He couldn't imagine such a home life. "Well, I thought I would offer...The hotel I work at is looking for banquet servers to work with catering an event soon. It's not much, but maybe he could stay once he has his foot in the door?" Liane accepted on Cartman's sake immediately, and she wouldn't hear any bellyaching about it from him when he found out. Butters dished the bacon from a hot pan to cool and lose some grease over a pair of paper towels, knowing the smell would expedite Cartman's shower. Warning them it was hot he put the communal bacon dish down on the table and sat to eat. When Cartman and Kenny hustled downstairs with wet hair, Bradley couldn't help but think they looked like they were wearing costumes. Kenny's clean, blue mechanic's jumpsuit and Eric's business casual suit...They both looked unnatural, like they were ready to rip their clothes off and assume some secret identity that was hidden underneath.

Conversation tapered off with few exceptions once everyone was sat down and eating. Kenny did point out to Eric that they were having bacon and pancakes for the second day in a row, but Eric would eat pancakes every other day for the rest of his life if he could manage it. Cartman was made to accept the job offer as a banquet server, and hearing about the rich venues they'd be serving he couldn't help wondering if there wouldn't be an opportunity to rob one. Liane rose from the table, and with assurances that the boys would do the dishes, she went upstairs to shower and prepare for her own work day.

"Thanks for the cover job, saves me the trouble I guess." Eric gave credit where it was due and attacked the bacon he had hoarded onto his plate, only to have strips pilfered by Kenny when he wasn't looking. Eric looked to Butters, "I assume you told him?" Butters whined, "You didn't leave me much choice." Cartman shrugged, "Well, you two are here, so here's the offer I meant to give last time. I organize a job, maybe you two help out. Be eyes on the scene, a driver, willing to hold an alibi...Something like that, I could give you two anywhere from five to fifteen percent of the cut. Five to fifteen grand." A job worth 100 grand overall, an exponential spike from the last they had attempted.

With the most casual wear on, Kenny handled the breakfast dishes into the washer not worried about getting anything on him. Butters looked to Bradley to confirm his willingness. That money was the toll he needed to get over the bridge he meant to set on fire once he was away from his controlling parents. It was the same for Bradley. "We want fifteen percent," Butters took Bradley's hand, "You can call me once you have the specifics. We're late for volunteering at the church. Good day, Eric."

Cartman blinked at the rapid negotiations, or lack thereof. "Right...You too. We better get going." Liane took the bus to work, Butters and Bradley walked to the church, and Cartman got the station wagon warmed up while Kenny finished off the dishes. Running around to the passenger side after locking up the house, Kenny got driven to the garage he worked at. The farewell kiss was back into their routine and Cartman was glad for it, preserving the cocky smirk on his face all the way to the Mayor's office at town hall. Mayor McDaniels leaned back in her armchair with a smug grin, "Eric Cartman. Surprised to see you here. How is your mother?"

"She's fine, just fine," Cartman burned, still haunted by the brief period when the Mayor had been dating his mom. "She says hi...But that's not why I'm here."

Mcdaniels laughed, "Of course not. You're here for a job. A big score, to get out of town with, is that right?" Cartman couldn't tell if she'd heard through the grapevine that he was on a deadline to leave South Park, or if she was just exercising her cruelly analytical perception of people. "Yeah, that's exactly right. I have just the score, which will require your blessing and oversight."

The mayor waved a hand and went for the cigar box on her desk, "It's not going to work like that, Cartman. You've got to do something for me first, on my conditions, to prove you're still up to the job."

"What's the job?" Cartman was not eager to spend much time hammering out these particulars. He wanted to get the work and get away from the powerfully odorous smoke of the mayor's cigar.

"Tip from undercover vice, there's a large drug deal going on tonight. The seller didn't go through anyone local, so it caused something of a stir, and there will probably be a hit on the deal. I couldn't care less what happens to those meth heads shooting each other up in the woods, but I want the money and preferably the product too. If you get one, I'll oversee another job for you. Get both and I'll give you a cut of this job's payout."

Eric held his tongue, and once eight seconds of silence passed after the mayor spoke, he acquiesced, "Sounds simple enough. Two-man job. You can call me with the particulars and we'll take care of it. If I could just tell you about my plan really quick..."

The mayor waved him off again, more violently this time, "I don't have time for that. I am very, very busy, and you have yet to prove you are worth listening to. Goodbye, Eric. Tell Liane I said hi as well."

"Sure."

Cartman quickly took his leave, and hurried on his way out of town hall to get some fresh air. Easy job, Cartman thought, just run straight into the crossfire of a gun battle and steal the money everyone is there for. They would need the element of surprise, and just the sort of intimidating presence that would really throw those junkies off of their guard.

"Snatching the choice meats from the rats...This sounds like a job for The Coon."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel bad for going so long without an update, but rest assured I am constantly thinking about my unfinished fics.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Multiple phone calls, ill-fated coincidences, and gang-related shootings. Can there be a happy ending?

Craig asked Tweek in the quiet and dimly lit coffee house, "Don't goth kids hang out and have coffee in the evening anymore?" 

"Not if they have to pay for it...And I can't stay open late enough to appease them. I should go home soon..." Tweek could easily be awake then, but keeping the shop open at night was asking for trouble. The register was empty, the counters were cleaned, and only one pot of hot coffee was left for the two of them to share. 

Relearning Tweek's habits, Craig took notice of his body language: poised to say something and holding his breath. "Something on your mind?"

Tweek cocked his neck to the side and gave what looked like a toothy grimace, but was actually a smile. "Yeah, I was wondering if you wanted to...Come over to my place. Spend the night..." Tweek laughed nervously, scratching at the back of his scalp. 

"I do want to come over to your place and spend the night," Craig confirmed with simplicity.

"Great!" Tweek replied thankfully. Someone had recently reminded him of how comforting it was not to be home alone every night, and thanks to that reminder he could share the night with Craig again. 

He was ready to go home right then when his phone rang, and no matter what ring tone he chose, the infrequent chirping from his pant leg always made him flail and shout in surprise. 

Fumbling in his retrieval of the device, it took a moment before Tweek could answer Craig's question of who was calling. "It's my dad...Why is he calling now? Can't it wait until tomorrow?" 

Craig tried to level Tweek's anxiety about a sudden and serious talk with his father, first asking, "You want me to stick around?" 

That was a difficult question for Tweek to answer. He did want him to stick around, but he did not want him to overhear anything either...To admit that would merit the question 'what don't you want me to overhear?', and it would be one can of worms after another from there. "No, it's okay...What will you do?"

Craig tried to think of a way to be useful, "I'll go to your place ahead of you. I could make dinner." Tweek wanted to ask if Craig could, not knowing him to be that active in the kitchen, but he could only nod his approval and answer the phone in one hand, with the other giving Craig a spare key to his house.

"Dad?" Tweek gulped and watched Craig go to his car outside. Tweek's parents have been scarce and stern in the past year, keeping tabs on him from afar while they were in Costa Rica. 

"Hello, Tweek. Quite a shocker you left on my voice mail the other day. It's hardly been a year since you took over the coffee house and you want to relocate. You have to understand, I held that location for a long time, and I'm quite surprised that you would decide to make such a big change so suddenly. Could you explain for me?"

It was difficult to divine the subtext in anything Tweek's father Richard said, speaking warmly and smoothly no matter the occasion. Whenever he asked for Tweek to justify himself, he couldn't help but think there was some indictment lurking underneath. How would he explain this time? Tell him what he thought he wanted to hear about making the coffee business more profitable?

"It's not really so sudden, I just haven't said anything to you." Tweek bit his lip and questioned the meaning of his own words, clarifying, "I just wanted to be completely sure first before I decided to leave."

"Completely sure of what?" Richard inquired, audibly drinking coffee with the phone near his face.

"I wanted to know if my friend Craig loves me. He does. I love him too. I want to live with him, somewhere that isn't South Park." It was the sort of heavy baggage he ought to have strained to unpack to his father, but it all tumbled out at once.

"Is that so?" Richard began, "I didn't know you had an interest in love, Tweek. Love is a very special thing, I think. Saying you're in love is enough explanation to do just about anything. That's good for you, really good."

"Thank you," Tweek exhaled after a long spell of holding his breath. 

"There's just one thing..." Richard began, "Leasing or selling our house and the store front in South Park is all fine and dandy, but there's something you're going to have to get rid of first. Well, not get rid of...You're going to need to sell it. You can find it in the crawl space under the house, and take it to the deal I've set up for you." 

Tweek placed a hand on his chest, going short of breath with a feeling of being strangled and compressed. "What? What am I selling? To who? This is too much, I can't..."

"I'm going to give you the address," Richard said bluntly. "If you want my blessing, you'll do as I tell you, just this once more. Goodbye, son."

Tweek collapsed against the counter and slid to the ground, dropping his phone in a clatter. It took several minutes to compose himself, perching with his head tucked between his knees, and his fingers buried in his hair. 

The meetings, the drop-offs, the ambushes, the guns, the killings, the money, the addicts. Tweek had been so dutiful to maintain the profits of the coffee house to justify not getting involved in any of that, but his father must have had other ideas leaving that contraband nest egg in the crawl space. Tweek fumbled with the phone, blubbering and shaking on the way out to his car, where he sat and took another concerted effort to try and collect himself.

Tweek parked a ways down the street and crept slowly to the side of his own house like a burglar, eyes wide, taking rapid puffs of air through his open mouth. He went through the crawl space access on the side of the house with his house key, and after pushing aside a few storage containers, he found the one he was looking for. Filled to the brim with brown bags of a "Colombian Blend", the hallmark of the Tweek trade. He dragged the heavy burden back to his car and locked it in the trunk. Tweek looked at the house with guilty trepidation. 

Inside the house's kitchen, Craig was still rifling through pantries when he got a call from Tweek. "Hey, how was your talk with Richard?"

Tweek gave a forlorn sigh and clutched his phone with both hands. "He wanted to talk about me moving, and all that. I told him about us. He, uh...Gave us his blessing. I just have to meet someone about the lease. Tonight. Would you...Wait for me? Be there when I get back?"

Craig opened and closed the fridge for the umpteenth time, trying to process the variances of Tweek's tone. "Yeah, I can wait...I'll go to the store for you?"

Tweek got back into his car quietly. "If you don't mind. Shopping stresses me out. I shouldn't be long...Love you, bye." Tweek only heard half of Craig's reciprocated farewell, being quick to drive away. He stared numbly at the road, and soon he was crying again, spilling confused and bitter tears stained with fright. There was only one person who could see him through this safely...

Driving to his storage unit downtown, Cartman called Kenny, drumming his fingers on the wheel while listening to the phone ring once before it went to voicemail: "Hey, this is Kenny Mccormick. If I didn't pick up it's because I'm busy. Cartman. Just leave a message. Hugs and kisses." 

"Come the fuck on," Cartman spat before the beep, "We've got work to do Kenny, call me back. Don't make me wait while you check some dickhead's engine, just tell him the whatever drive is broke and offer the poor sap some lube before you and every other mechanic in that garage pull a train on his wallet. Hugs and kisses, you grease monkey." 

Cartman grimaced, locked his elbows, and squeezed the wheel tightly while taking deep breaths. He was going to die in this shit hole town, wasn't he? 

Two weeks from retirement, went on the big score, got put under: classic.

Kyle Broflovski would read the obituary somewhere and say 'I wonder if they needed two urns for that fatass's ashes' while his sissy emo boyfriend (wearing nothing except for an apron and a jock strap) served him bagels and lox in bed. 

This wasn't even the big score; this was the suicide mission before the big score, because the mayor probably wanted him to die. Then she could cozy up to his grieving mother. Scissor her, make an honest woman out of her, and adopt a kid that would get all the love and none of the mental scarring Eric did.

The station wagon nearly bashed into the gate of the self-storage center, and Cartman honked at it for being in his fucking way as it retracted apologetically. Blocking his storage unit off from view with the station wagon, he went inside to gather his tools of war. 

Disassembling and re-assembling his handguns, checking the dates on canisters of gasses and smokes, studying a map of the coordinates he'd been given to plan his attack, and going across the street to the Kentucky Fried Chicken multiple times for snacks to feed his growling nerves; he paced the dark concrete storage unit like the next pig in line for the butcher. It was astonishing to realize how he had burned through the hours in this state of apprehension by the time he looked at his phone. Adding to the shock was the notice of a voice mail and a missed call from Kenny. He called back Kenny and got no response, so he was forced to go to his voice mail: 

"Hey. You never said anything about having a job tonight until today. And you never said anything about meeting the mayor until last night...So, don't bitch me out, but I can't help you. I have business to settle too, something just came up. If you can't handle whatever this is on your own, then just walk away from it. Please? I won't be able to answer the phone again...Was hoping you'd pick up...Don't do anything stupid."

Eric sat in the corner of the storage unit with a defunct expression backlit by his phone. The guns on the table were each fully loaded with an extra in the chamber, but the gunman felt empty, with his hands too clammy and greasy to think of picking up his weapons. Was Kenny doing this on purpose? He couldn't do this on his own. The mayor would tell Cartman what a fuck up he was and RSVP to Wendy's party celebrating his deportation to the nearest city's gutters. 

Cartman caught a glance at his reflection from the phone's screen after it went dark and he glared back at it, rising up from sitting on the ground. He wasn't going to pussy out, and if he died tonight, he'd leave no trace of himself behind. 

His phone lit up again, this time with a call from the mayor. 

"Hello, this is Eric Cartman, how may I help you?"

"Just thought I'd check in, see if you were getting cold feet," the mayor needled at his pride, "You and your partner."

"It'll be just me tonight, so I'll want my pay to reflect that. And I assure you, my feet are well insulated."

The Mayor drilled at him now. "You said this was a two-man job, and that was cocky enough. Honestly, if you just want some money to get out of town I'd give it to you."

"Oh yeah? How much?"

The Mayor pinched her brow and sighed into the receiver. "Five...Ten grand."

"That's not enough," Cartman said coolly, "I've got a newer, more efficient plan, that I can execute on my own."

"It's your funeral," Mcdaniels acquiesced and lit a cigar before hanging up.

Over the train tracks, in the middle of nowhere...Begging to get dropped on by armed thugs. Thugs that the seller circumvented, outsourcing to outsiders. If Cartman didn't have so many things bouncing around in his head already, maybe he could have divined who the seller was...He only reasoned they must be green to drug dealing or stupidly desperate to make a quick buck.

"Tweek...Are you okay?" Kenny asked candidly in a low whisper, shouldering his hunting rifle as icy rain pattered outside the old, abandoned mill in South Park's back woods. Getting picked up from the garage, Tweek had taken him to the site early, parking behind the mill. The winding, neglected two-lane road running south and north of them hadn't gotten any traffic besides them, and the wait was proving treacherous. 

Tweek took his time before responding, afraid to divert his attention from the ominous road. "No. I feel like I'm going to die. And if I did it would be because I deserved it," Tweek shivered and clawed at his own upper arms, "For lying to Craig after everything I said. Jesus, why did my father have to be a meth dealer? Does he want me to die here?" 

Kenny struggled to console Tweek, who was certainly justified in his trembling anxiety. "I could ask Jesus the same thing, and I think he'd sympathize with us." Donning the black cowl and mask of Mysterion he spoke more gravely: "You got Craig back, you're severing the mistakes of the past and washing your hands of it. You can take that money and live a new life. You'll forgive yourself." Mysterion climbed some creaky wooden shelving and was gone to the rafters. "I'll be watching you. I won't let harm come to you."

The growling, masked crusader put Tweek at ease more than he had any right doing. Tweek had gone through this kind of negotiation before with Kenny at his side, but never for so much, and not to anyone his father hadn't introduced him to first. Tweek's gaze flickered back and forth between one of the filthy windows and the cache of drugs he'd set on the dusty concrete floor. "If I had found that junk by accident before, living alone and not wanting to think about how alone I was...I'd probably be dead." Mysterion remained silent in the rafters, but Tweek was grateful to have someone there listening. "I really am done with it now, though. It makes me sick being this close, I just want it gone."

The guilt of playing a part in the trade and proliferation of this dangerous drug was striking Tweek and Kenny in equal measure, but the dissonance of ideals was overcome by the call of filial duty and the desperate want of capital.

"It'll be gone soon, and I'm certain you'll be able to keep your word to Craig without your father or I fucking things up again..." Mysterion condemned himself, but Tweek was fast to absolve him. 

"It's not your fault. You've saved me. After all of this is over...Don't think you can just say goodbye. You're not just some shady pusher to me, and Craig will come around to the reason why you're my friend eventually."

"Thanks, Tweek. Really." 

Kenny didn't ask to be a shady character, after all. He wanted to be loved like a hero or a member of royalty. Being born and resurrected over and over again into a life of squalor had driven him to the bottom of every habit and every circle of hell. "Cartman will probably be a hard sell though," he chuckled darkly, unable to imagine the day Craig could stand the fatass.

"Yeah...But, there's a reason he's your friend...Right?" Tweek asked, and water dripped from holes in the ceiling during the silence of moments passing.

"There are reasons, yes. Though...Maybe it's not something I can explain right now," Kenny admitted. 

Once, trapped between the planes of life and death, he had taken residence in Cartman's soul. It gave him an intimate understanding of Cartman that made him overlook many of his flaws, with a hope to bring out his strengths. In a way, since that time, he loved Cartman unconditionally. 

For a long time, Cartman pined for Kyle Broflovski. Seeing as Cartman did, he could understand the attraction. Kyle was sharply intelligent, strong-willed, and very fetching if you've got a thing for gingers. Every time the two got put in the same room, sparks flew. Cartman mistook the reason why, and that contributed to their group's falling out when paired with Kenny's own untimely confession to Stan Marsh. 

Stan Marsh...Just so classically handsome, sensitive, and sweet. Kenny misread that sweetness and sensitivity, and struck out so hard he had decided he would rather burn in hell for pride than live with the embarrassment.

Stan and Kyle loved each other. That's what hurt the most. How perfect they were individually, and how perfectly they complemented each other. 

Full of self-loathing, jealousy, and envy; Kenny and Cartman licked at each other's wounds. Over time they healed and wondered what might come next, but the question lingered for some time...Were they each the other's second choice? 

"Someone's coming!" Tweek shouted and staggered on his feet seeing a black Ford Taurus slowly coasting down from the north. 

"They're on time." Mysterion tried to calm Tweek, "This is still going according to plan. It's just one car full of people. They'll have money to trade and be on their way. People respect your father's name a lot more than mine, and they shouldn't give you any trouble." 

Tweek couldn't imagine anything but trouble from the thugs rolling to a stop outside the mill. Someone from the passenger side stepped out in a green rain slicker and took a look around. With a flashlight Kenny had brought from work, Tweek signaled the buyers into the lightless mill. 

The look-out signaled to the car. From the rear passenger-side door, a man in a grey rain slicker stepped out and held a metal briefcase over his head, prompting their look-out to gesture with a beckoning hand. Tweek gnashed his teeth together and hissed, "They're not coming inside...They want me to go out there!"

"Don't!" Mysterion commanded. It was unreasonable and suspicious to meet outside, given the weather. "Just wait, and they'll come in if they want to make a deal." Tweek stayed put, but he could tell they were waiting on him, and it made him squirm where he stood, scratching at randomly positioned itches manifesting themselves from nervous tension. "What if they don't!? What will they do!"

"Tweek!" Mysterion pleaded for him not to shout and panic, "Just wait...! If something happens get behind cover." Tweek glanced at some rusted old shelving and heaped up junk, as well as the sturdy back-entrance with a secured bar lock, ready to hide or run to his car and try for an escape.

The driver of the Taurus layed into the horn to make an intimidating blare of noise, causing Tweek to shout and convulse, dropping the flashlight from his hand.

Mysterion fumed overhead, felling the pressure mount on him as well as Tweek buckled underneath it. He moved along the rafter to where it met the wall and found a broken window jam he could point his rifle outside. Sending Tweek outside to meet them introduced elements of risk he was not prepared to wager on, but if they started shooting first and assaulted the mill instead...

Searing highbeams flooded the mill and the yard before it, but it wasn't from the headlights of the Taurus. From the bend of road to the south, a rusty pale-blue canopied-truck came screaming into view with lights trained on them. On it's rapid approach, the passenger and someone in the canopied bed of the truck let loose with rifle fire that took out a front tire of the Taurus, and put the top half of the driver's head onto the dashboard. Tweek threw himself behind cover, and with trembling hands retrieved the revolver he had tucked away at his belt line.

His father had left it to him. It was the same one he'd pointed at his son's head, to teach him a lesson about not trusting strangers. He could point it in front of him and shoot it, but he wasn't going to hit anything at a distance. There were six armed men outside ready to kill him, and the only thing he could be thankful for is that, for the moment, they were shooting at each other. 

Kenny used the scope of his Ruger 10/22 to get a better view of the truck that had ambushed the meet, difficult to see who was inside behind their vehicle's high beams. They kept enough distance to put their long rifles to use and put heavy pressure on the men in rain coats who were shooting back with pistols. 

"One of them's running for the door!" Tweek shouted and Kenny struggled to snap to as he saw the front door of the mill get bashed open. 

Before Kenny could withdraw the silenced muzzle of his rifle from the window jam, the man in the green rain coat was recovering from the tackle through the door, and raising the machine pistol in both hands to shoot.

Tweek went rigid and expelled a great cry of anguish as shots were let loose from his revolver at the attacker. 

The first shot ripped through the thug's shoulder and made the rapid-fire pistol in his hands spray wildly against the far wall. 

The next shot from Tweek went wide from the target, but his guardian in the rafters dealt a killing blow from above. 

"Did you bring more bullets?" Mysterion shouted over the din of noise, and before Tweek could reply that he had not, there was an eruption of sound and purple smoke outside. The rapidly diffusing smoke engulfed the car of the ambushed buyers, and Tweek called up, "I saw someone run into the smoke! They were wearing a cape or something!" Gunshots went off in the haze of smoke like lightning bolts in a tumultuous storm cloud.

"Watch the doors for movement!" Mysterion instructed, returning to a position pointing out the window. He managed to shoot out the high beams on the truck outside before they retaliated with blind shots at the mill.

Not to be forgotten, from within the plume of smoke, another metal cannister was flung toward the truck that seeded a new cloud of dense, colored fog. Before the ambushers could drive out of it, Kenny emptied the six shots from his rifle's rotary magazine into what he estimated to be the truck's windshield. The third gunman ran out from the canopy of the truck, and the smoke surrounding it, but he was cut down in a crossfire of bullets. 

"Who's left out there!" Mysterion threatened, hurrying to replace the empty magazine from his rifle.

A vague, stocky shape wreathed in smoke and a black cape stepped into view. 

His face was hidden behind a mask, but the identity of the Coon was no secret to Mysterion.

"Just me," Cartman shouted up, "What was that thing you told me about walking away from something I couldn't handle on my own?"

Kenny scrambled down from the rafters in a rush to meet Cartman at the door, spotting the briefcase in his hand. As if an afterthought, Cartman cracked it open and whistled at the crisp stacks of bills inside. 

"What the fuck are you doing here?" the bitterness of the words melted with the warm delivery behind it, and Kenny shouldered his rifle to hug Cartman. 

"Uh...Yeah! What the fuck are you doing here? That's Cartman, right?" Tweek couldn't bring himself to rise from the floor, pins and needles still running up and down his legs from deathly fright.

"Here for the money and the drugs, same old-same old," the Coon shrugged, looking to the drug cache still on the floor by the fallen flashlight.

"You're not taking the money, fatass, it's Tweek's." Mysterion dropped the warmth and pulled away with a stern expression, stepping back between Eric and the goods. 

"I'm here on the mayor's behalf, putting sanctions on a deal that was made on her turf without her blessing. If Tweek's here, I'm guessing it's because of his dad. So, I'll call my boss, and Tweek, you call your boss," Cartman kept up a cordial air, but the tension had not dispersed entirely, and Kenny remained out of the negotiation, asking himself uncomfortable questions as he waited.

Why didn't Richard pay off the mayor before he set up a deal?  
What would Kenny have done if The Coon hadn't ambushed the ambushers?  
Who tipped off the ambushers in the first place? 

Tweek asked himself the same questions even as he was talking to Richard. He wanted to scream and shout at him for everything he went through, but he felt so drained he just nodded along until he could forward his dad to the Mayor.

Mcdaniels would take a cut of the money, and all of the drugs. She would offer the drugs back to the original buyers for a low price, saying it was recovered from local meth heads who had ambushed their men. This would bring her the profit she was after, and keep the Tweek name off of their shit list.

"Are you alright to drive back on your own?" Mysterion hugged Tweek after getting a nod to his gesture. 

"Follow me back to town...? I better hurry...Shit..." Tweek mumbled and rubbed at his puffy, red eyes, "I have to drop this briefcase off with my dad's lawyer before I can go home..."

"C'mon Kenny, I've got the wagon on the other side of this trail to the east." Cartman gestured in the direction of the rear entrance to the mill, explaining how he had spotted Tweek's car out back when he was sneaking up on the meet. They trudged through the muck in their costumes to the car and followed Tweek back to South Park, leaving the mess at the mill to get sorted by the mayor's cleaning crew. 

"Well, it's a good thing you were looking out for him, wasn't it?" Cartman scoffed once they saw Tweek off and headed for South Park's Town Hall. 

Kenny shed his costume down to the damp, form-fitting, black thermals underneath. "It's a good thing you were looking out for him, too." He leaned over and pecked the fatass's cheek to spite his transparent jealousy. 

Without someone actively shouting back at him, Cartman's blustering frittered away. "Well...He is pretty hopeless isn't, he?"

"I can't say I agree with you," Kenny spoke up, "I have a lot of hope for him."

"Psschyeah, right," Cartman rolled his eyes and got caught up with Kenny's smile. "We'll see how he does without our help. And where's my handout, huh? Who's gonna fix me up with a date and keep me from getting popped at a drug deal?"

Kenny scooted closer over the seat and held a hand over Eric's thigh. "Me, obviously." He started to stroke up and down in with slow, grazing circles. "I know just your type: blonde-haired, blue-eyed..." Kenny leaned into him and trailed teeth over his neck. "Flirty, fun, crack-shot with a rifle...Just make sure to schedule your dates in advance, and you'll be sure to get a hand."

Eric let out an amorous grunt, leaning in his seat and craning his neck, giving Kenny's fingers more access with a spread of his knees. "You think I'm what they're looking for..?" 

Kenny's nose nudged up and down against Eric's neck with a nod and made him shiver, "Mmhmm. They've got this thing for big, beautiful males. Bad boys, too. Is that you?" Kenny grabbed a handful of Eric's bulge to fondle as he cooed, "Are you a bad boy...?"

Cartman tried to say 'fuck yes', but the words oozed into each other as one long wanting groan as he struggled to stay on the road; enjoying the friction of Kenny's palm firmly grasping and stroking him. When the blonde's fingers tickled and trailed the underside of his belly trying to snake into his pants the car swerved a bit and Eric had to bring his knees back together. "Fucking tease..." he whined, speeding downtown.

"I don't tease about fucking," Kenny chided as he released Eric and scooted back to his seat. 

"What are you doing?" Cartman asked breathlessly as he parked in the alley beside town hall and observed Kenny rifling through the glove box.

"Getting ready," Kenny explained, "Hurry up and make the drop, because when you get back...Well, I won't tease any more."

Cartman could clearly make out Kenny's endowment straining the wet material of his thermal underwear, and his hungry stare lingered even as he moved to get out of the car.

At the Tweek household, all the lights were off, and the master of the house found his home empty. After hiding his pistol back in his bedroom, he came to the living room. Plugging his phone in and collapsing onto the couch, he called Craig. 

How long had he been gone...? How long had it taken until Craig got fed up with waiting? 

Within the few seconds he allowed himself to close his eyes, Tweek had fallen asleep, and left a full minute of himself breathing into the phone on Craig's voice mail.

Forty-five minutes later he awoke to Red Racer on the TV, and a warm body spooning behind him. He tensed and tried to sit up, but he was held put, and so he went slack again.

"You weren't here when I got back..." Tweek mumbled sleepily, feeling very warm under a quilt with Craig on the couch. The freezing rain outside felt far away, and his clothes had dried out some.

"It's a long story," Craig droned in that deliberate, even tone that made Tweek's scalp tingle when he heard it so close to his ear.

Tweek turned away from the bright light of the television set and burrowed himself against Craig's chest. "Tell me anyway? I'll try not to fall asleep."

Craig took a moment to condense the story to its most pertinent details, and related, "I went to go shopping for you, but I saw Clyde at the store buying tampons and energy drinks for Bebe. He said he was going to Dave & Buster's, and that I should go with, but I said I was busy. He told me they had a new Red Racer driving game there, and I called him a lying asshole, but it turned out they did. So I played that for awhile, and had a beer, and I brought home half of my sandwich and fries if you want any."

There was a long pause, and then Tweek stirred with embarrassment. "I might have fallen asleep a little. I'm not really hungry..."

Craig asked, "Did everything go okay with what you had to do?" 

"I talked with my dad's lawyer for a long time. I'm liquidating the house and the Tweek Bros. coffee here," Tweek explained, and Craig tried to clarify, "You're not just relocating?"

"No. I'm quitting Tweek Bros. for good. I need my dad to know he can't boss me around anymore, for anything." Tweek unfolded his arms and looped them around Craig, "We have the money to go somewhere new, and do what we wanted to do before, so let's do it. As soon as possible."

"Sounds good."

Craig shut off the TV and closed his eyes. He had not allowed himself to dream that dream for a long time, and as he built the dream up again in his mind's eye he fell into a deep sleep. 

The cozy apartment that allowed a cockatoo and a guinea pig under the same roof. The cafe they owned, where he could play music, and Tweek could hang his art. The next morning, those images would remain just as vivid and familiar when he awoke, all of them affirming his renewed desires...Except for one. 

He could hardly understand why his subconscious put them there...But in that dreamy, dimly-lit cafe, he saw Eric Cartman and Kenny Mccormick staring into each other's eyes and holding hands under the table. In the world of that dream, he knew the two of them being together somehow made Tweek happy, and that made the Craig in his dream happy too.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter I shunted off a scene of Kenman smut to focus on Creek, and the Kenman smut has since become a chapter of its own. Enjoy!

With Cartman circling to the passenger side of the station wagon parked in the alley beside Town Hall, Kenny opened the passenger door for him with his seat pushed and tilted back as far as it could go.

"So how did your meeting go?" Kenny picked up his legs for Cartman to prop over his broad shoulders, rolling his thermal bottoms down to rest at the top of his thighs. He'd been impatiently groping and probing himself waiting all this time for "The Coon" to get back, playing a private mental slide show of memorably deviant sessions of play between them to keep his arousal peaked. They'd formed something of a habit for sex marathons after narrowly escaping death on the job, and tonight would be no exception. 

"Do you really care?" Cartman huffed, having gotten a hell of a rise out of the mayor bursting into her office sporting a cape, an erection, and a massive amount of methamphetamines. The fact that she was considering giving him another job at all spoke to how utterly fucked South Park was. 

"Not really." To keep clean-up to a minimum until they decided to go back to the house, Kenny foisted a condom upon Eric, who begrudgingly unfurled it onto his fat, querulous prick that was already spotty with pre-cum from dry-rutting over Kenny's bare flesh.

"It went fine. I'll have more work lined up...This is for you." Cartman clapped a roll of sweaty bills into Kenny's palm and beared down to kiss him firmly, groaning from the back of his throat, digging his fingers into calves wrapped tight in wet thermal stockings.

Kenny wasn't going to turn down easy money like that, though he wasn't sure about signing up to do more work like that...For now though, the green wad was carelessly tossed into the back seat. With ardour overwhelming his pragmatism, he couldn't care less about the money, and clutched onto Eric's soft paunch instead, playfully craning his face away from a gluttonous, tonguing kiss to respond, "Thanks, you didn't have to...Hey, why are you stopping?" 

With his gloved cock wedged at a taut but eager crevice, The Coon looked down intensely at the amorous blonde, and reached to take a discarded mask and cowl off the floor. "Put these on."

Mysterion chuckled, assuming his role once again solely for the sake of raunchy costume play. His feet planted on the ceiling of the car, toes splayed wide, and he rolled his hips to spurn Cartman's advancing penetration. "Alright, fat boy...Show me what you've got. First one to lose it is the sidekick of this duo..."

From his trusty utility glove box, the Coon had procured a travel-sized bottle of lubrication that was running on empty, but had enough to squeeze out with a few jerky flicks of his wrist; sending cool droplets of water-based sex grease onto hot flesh that trembled upon being splashed. "If you want me to be leader just say so, because there's no way I'm going to let you beat me..."

Kenny murmured and writhed as Cartman rubbed in dollops of lube at a time; from his smooth taint and pursed scrotum, to his primed shaft and sensitive glans. "Hands off...That's not fair in the least..."

The Coon whistled and released his hold on Kenny's cock to grab his hips instead. "You would get off, just getting your ass fucked..." he hissed and teased, jabbing his cockhead forward until he started to feel some give and pushed further, his patience rewarded with a dip deeper into that tight, anointed well of intense heat. 

The pair of them clinged to one another, forehead to forehead and eyes clasped tight, slowly pushing and socketing themselves together with labored breaths throughout. Hilted and sheathed respectively, they kissed as rain started to ping off the roof of the car.

"Go. Do it. Fuck me, come on..." with Mysterion's dares and orders melting and clarifying into begging, the Coon responded slowly and smoothly, reeling his cock out and pushing it back in at his own pace. 

"Faster, you fat fuck!" 

The Coon teased him so, feeling desperation broiling up out of Mysterion as he mated him so gently with a subtle rocking of his waist, pinning him down to keep him from bucking back. "Harder too. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

"Yes...!" Mysterion let out a strangled groan of anguish, wrapping his legs around his breeder's waist and exposing his neck; his tender flesh getting licked and snapped at, he reached both hands down to jerk and fondle himself, restrained under his partner's protruding gut.

The Coon grabbed his hands by the wrists and pinned them above his head. "Hands off," he growled, "Like you said." 

Mysterion planted his feet on the dashboard and levered his hips back and forth as best as he could while being smothered. The Coon even pulled his hips back a bit to give him more wiggle room, inviting Mysterion to fuck himself on his rival's cock. 

Being on the bottom and thrashing his pelvis, Mysterion got the car rocking again, but his diminishing stamina put a pleading whine into his sloppy panting. Before he could give voice to his growing need, the Coon released his bony wrists and instead took handfuls of his taut glutes to hold him for a reciprocation of his efforts. 

They were both past the point for teasing and egging each other on. Colliding together in violent undulations of their bodies, with hot breath fogging the windows, they were both primed to go off and could only wait for who went first. Amidst straining groans and shouts they locked lips and tried to suck the breath out of each other. 

Churning a shared culture of saliva with their tongues and huffing one another's fumes until they grew dizzy, it was impossible to parse the order of events to the climactic finish-- but all at once they were seizing and melting together. There was some subtle and secret desperation there neither of them could see: a desire to join two souls in one vessel as they had done a long time ago. Dug in as deep as he could go and still rooting for more, the Coon discharged himself with one throbbing push after another, digging his nails into the flesh of Mysterion's rump as he was wrung out in a vice grip. 

With his pleasure button jammed down after a good pummeling, Mysterion's prick gave the release of a male conditioned to enjoy anal sex: with white syrupy ichor, not shooting off in arcs of triumph, but rapidly draining from his tap like a running faucet between their bare stomachs. 

All throughout his orgasm he was latched on in every way that his body could manage: legs looped around a wide waist, arms clasped about shoulders, lips sealed, and his insides squeezing so firmly he could take a pulse off of the dick quivering inside.

Progressively, after tensing their muscles for so long, their bodies had to relax and they wilted together across the reclined passenger seat. 

With residual heat tingling their skin and pouring rain droning in their ears, it was a struggle not to fall asleep. Still, they allowed themselves the risk and luxury of skating that thin line between sedated comfort and heavy slumber post-coitus. 

Kisses broken to take in air, Cartman tugged off their masks and nosed under Kenny's left earlobe to stamp his moist lips along his neck. Moving around some he noticed the sticky strands connecting their bellies, chastising, "You're the one that should have worn a condom if you didn't want to make a mess."

Kenny felt up Eric's soft but mussy brown locks, sending strands flowing on a breeze as he exhaled deeply from his nostrils after each breath. "I'm going to call that one a draw...We'll pick it up again at your place..." Judging the exhausted sigh warbling out of Eric as a sign of weakness Kenny asserted, "I'll be on top next if you're already worn out."

He kept his corpulent lover awake with whispers and gentle rakes of his nails over his scalp. "We better go do it down in the basement so we don't wake up your mom. In the morning you can make breakfast, and I'll check the suspension on the station wagon because we might have jacked it up a bit..." He smiled, thoroughly amused by the damage they may have inflicted on the reliable car, but Cartman remained a quiet lump of burning love that kissed along his jawline and his collar bone. 

"Come on, let's get cleaned up," Kenny urged, grabbing and squeezing Eric's love handles. With a slow uncorking that made them both moan and twitch from their cocks, Cartman managed to pull himself out of Kenny, leaning up and away to reach back to the glovebox. Following him into an up-right sitting position, Kenny craned his head down to lick and slurp his own discharge off of Eric's pudgy belly.

"Cut that out! Fucking pervert." Cartman blustered and tried to unstraddle himself from Kenny's lap, but he was held fast in an embrace that kept him captive to the blonde licking up his stomach to reach his chest. 

"Let's go again, right now," Kenny grunted amorously, nuzzling Eric's squishy pectorals and edging his nipples with his tongue. 

"God damnit...," Cartman squirmed, "I'm not putting on a repeat performance for however many bums are jacking it to us in this nasty alleyway. Let's go to my place, I want to take a bath."

Kenny pouted, giving a few badgering pats of his hips against Eric's fat bottom, but he soon acquiesced with an unfurling of his arms and clasping fingers. "Alright...But gimme a kiss first." Cartman's lips twitched squeamishly, but he screwed up his eyes and bent down to kiss Kenny, not sharing the same zeal for the taste but still able to enjoy the tactile response of their lips together.

Back in their seats in rumpled states of undress, Cartman rolled down the window to toss and splatter a knotted-up condom against the brick wall of Town Hall; a particularly delinquent act of littering and vandalism that made Kenny titter with laughter. Full of mirthful pride, Cartman pointed to the blots of white streaking down brick in the rain, asserting, "That's modern art right there. The contrasting textures, and the chaotic lines of dripping spooge...It is an exquisite piece of art, wouldn't you agree, my muse?"

"It puts Banksy and Jackson Pollack to shame, I would say," Kenny reclined and took more tissues from the glovebox to wipe up his own stomach, very flattered to be the muse of such an accomplished artist. 

Arriving home they observed Liane asleep on the couch with the television on, prompting them to carefully tiptoe upstairs to draw a hot bath. With their clothes in wet heaps on the tile floor they huddled in the deep basin, chest-to-back, with Cartman closest to the faucet gushing out hot water, waiting until the water was perilously close to overflowing before shutting it off. "Don't fall asleep on me," Kenny warned as Cartman sagged back against his chest and closed his eyes. "Such a chick, with your tub talk," Eric complained, feeling burnt out and ready to drift off. 

"You're the chick," Kenny contended, "always having to 'freshen up' before you'll let me into your precious inner sanctum. Why don't you let me help you, like I used to do..." Kenny's renewed groping urges made Cartman wiggle and slosh bath water about, hissing for him to stop, "I've got a handle on it now, I don't need your help with it anymore!" 

Kenny kissed his chubby cheek and held him tightly, patronizing, "You're so cute, getting embarrassed about it still." There was nothing that could gross out Kenny, and thinking of the intimate process involved in flushing out his lover's anus gave him an erection. "Just loosen up a little..." Kenny cooed suggestively, boldly grinding underneath him. 

"You can be such a literal douchebag! I said I don't need your help!" Cartman stood fast on the matter, giving no regard to Kenny's pouting, he explained with rare temperance and candor, "You'll get to do plenty to me as is...So, I would just prefer a little bit of privacy before I get fucked."

"Fair enough," Kenny sighed, having to acknowledge that he was getting a bit clingy and invasive. Drops of water, spaced far apart, broke the even surface of the water as they fell from the faucet. Cartman lathered his body with soap, and rubbed shampoo over his scalp, but as their talk was overtaken by the desolate and tortuous sound of pins of water dropping-- and as he felt Kenny's ardour underneath him ebbing away, he had to ask: "I'm not some waifish twink that lives on a diet of micro-greens and hot air. Isn't it just a little off-putting for you? What do you get out of it? Please don't say..."

"No, it's not because I have some kind of fetish for it," Kenny intercepted with certainty of what he was going to say, waiting for Eric to re-surface after rinsing his hair in the water. "It's because you're always guarding yourself, taking the lead, and helping you through your first time...You let me in. Like, metaphorically. And literally, but the point is you letting me take the lead then made me feel really close to you."

Cartman threatened to dip under the water again, burning with embarrassment. "You don't need to rinse out my ass to be close to me, stupid." Kenny chuckled and took the lead to rub conditioner over Cartman's scalp. "Yeah, you're right. But if we're going to get cozy again, I want the full monty. You're not really satisfied being friends with benefits either, are you?"

Putting aside the boggling fact that Kenny had used douching him as a metaphor for getting close emotionally, Cartman admitted, "No, it sucks. I'll let you take the lead more often, and try to be more open with stuff. Seriously."

"I will too." Kenny kissed Eric's forehead and rinsed out his conditioner for him. It was at his own insistence the last time they 'took a break', but he was glad to call it on again. "And we can save the rest of the 'relationship talk' for later, I don't want to spoil the bangin' mood we had goin' on earlier."

"Speaking of spoiling the banging mood, get the fuck out of the bathroom and let me douche myself in privacy already."

Kenny tiptoed down the stairs in the bathrobe he usually pilfered from the rack. With a more attentive eye he spotted a note in the dining room, reading that there was fried chicken and wilted greens in the fridge if they were hungry. Smiling over at the slumbering form in the living room he moved to turn off the TV and spread the quilt from the back of the couch over Liane. He wanted to try harder, not just for his sake and Cartman's sake, but for her sake as well. "It's like you're already my mother-in-law, you've done so much for me..." he doted affectionately, talking to himself, before scooping up the bong and baggie she had left out on the living room table. "Now, if you don't mind, I'll just be borrowing this pipe here and waiting down in the basement to make tender love to your son's sparkling-clean ass."

"Ugh, what the fuck, dude."   
Once he was clean to his self-satisfaction, Cartman padded down the stairs to the basement in a robe that barely covered what it intended to, with a towel wrapped up around his head to dry his hair. He found Kenny stoned on the couch, eating fried chicken, watching Terrance & Phillip. When he got close he also saw a cardboard box marked 'costumes; don't open mom!' opened and teeming with curio. 

"Just making myself at home, dude." Kenny smiled and stuck the bong in his face. "Wanna shotgun this last hit?" It wasn't often that Cartman obliged, owing to the fat boy's opinion that the grass was for hippies, and it usually just put him to sleep or gave him a headache. 

"Fuck it, maybe it'll help me 'open up'," Cartman scoffed, remaining standing as he observed with some pride the way that Kenny tried to peek up his bathrobe at his smooth and bare nethers, having gone the extra mile to touch himself up with a shave. 

Kenny torched the little patch of green left in the resinous glass bowl of the bong stem while breathing in, percolating the water and filling the neck of the glass water-pipe with curling white smoke. Once his lips were off the pipe he put them to Cartman's lips and exhaled. Eric blubbered into a fit of coughing and motioned hastily for the gatorade Kenny had taken out of the fridge to bring downstairs. 

Dropping in a heap onto the couch, Cartman spaced out and leaned on Kenny, who took the towel on his head in both hands to ruffle over his scalp and dry his hair. When his eyes fell from the TV to the open box on the floor, Cartman remembered to ask, "What'd you get that shit out for?"

"Thought it'd be worth a look. You're obviously still into costume play." Kenny eased off the couch to rifle through the box, which sent Cartman to slump down onto his side as he watched. 

"And how can you call it 'that shit'? This box is full of precious memories and saucy treasures. I mean, here's your leopard-print tube top. That's hot. Now, where's my stuff...You didn't throw my stuff out did you?" Kenny pulled out Eric's outfits and dug deeper for his own, observing the stark dichotomy in Cartman's tastes between crisp and authoritative uniforms, and clashing, skanky slutwear. If he wasn't opposed to armchair psychology, he'd say there was something to that...As it was, he just thought costumes were fun no matter what you dressed up as.

"No, some of yours is in there, but some is in another box..." Cartman tried to lead him elsewhere, but Kenny kept digging, calling them as he saw them. "Princess, cheerleader, street slut, gimp, dom queen, a certain military's youth uniform, Japanese schoolgirl..." Kenny pulled out a large poof ball shape wrapped in a shopping bag. "Oh my god."

Cartman cringed as Kenny pulled out the clown-like wig of curly red hair through a fit of laughter.

**"The Kyle wig."**

"Yeah, yeah, it's really fucking funny Kenny, you can throw it away for me, thanks." Cartman held his face in his hands remembering the bizarre night where they had gotten obscenely drunk and horny, and Kenny had roleplayed as his unrequited crush. 

"Aw, come on **fatass**. You big, hunky fatass. Don't you want some kosher meat stuffing your tuchus?" Kenny held it over his head and affected a naggy, nasaly voice that made Cartman huck a throw pillow at him and respond contentiously, "It's not funny! I seriously hate him so god damn much now!"

"Oy vey, your goyish chutzpah's got me all verkplempt!" Kenny could only laugh so long while Eric looked upset, and he tossed the clown-like wig aside.   
"You're all over him, huh?"

Cartman sulked, stating definitively, "Yes. If we had hooked up, it would have gone the same as me being with Wendy. We fight, we build sexual tension challenging each other for dominance, but once that tension's gone there isn't anything to go off of."

That bout of play where Kenny dressed up as Kyle had been...Interesting, but it was a mistake. The worst of it was that he wasn't able to reciprocate, not at all fitting the part to play Stan, which made Eric ask: "And you're all over Stan?"

Flipping the question around, Kenny realized it had been silly of him to ask about Kyle. Of course they were over them. Still, this had gone unsaid for too long. "Yeah. If we had hooked up...I don't know, I'd probably get bored."

Drug-running, shoot-outs, bank robberies, and then some...Whenever he got an e-mail from Stan and Kyle the things they were doing sounded so mundane by comparison. Supper club, protests, art galleries, and folk music...Picking one or the other, Kenny would rather live for the rush of danger and adventure, and there was always more than enough when he went along with Eric.

"You know they e-mailed me to say they might be in town some time soon...Maybe we could do a double date and hang out with them...?" Kenny proposed, seeing how the idea fit them both. He had seen them on multiple occasions with Butters or Wendy accompanying him, but not with Eric, seemingly to their relief, and he wanted to see if things could get smoothed over...Maybe they could all be good friends again...

Sensing the invitation as a challenge Cartman shrugged, "Fine, that's fine. I mean, I'm not going to start shit with them or anything." Kenny returned his attention to the box, just about reaching the bottom, commenting, "Great. I don't know why you haven't seen them sooner." That was still something Cartman hadn't explained to him, and it would have to wait, as something much more pressing surfaced from the bottom of the box. "This is new."

Kenny pulled a flared plastic tube out of the box, read the logo on the side, and uncapped it. He fingered the soft, cool, silicone mock-orifice and looked up to Cartman. "You could have told me if you were so hard up for sex you had to go and buy a cock-sleeve...What's her name, huh?"

Cartman sat up and adjusted himself, becoming uncomfortably stiff as Kenny teased him and licked at the toy's point of entry. "I could have at least given you an old-fashioned, even if we were fighting or something...I mean, what kind of Melvin buys one of these? Does it feel any good?" Kenny took a bottle of lube from the box and knelt down in front of Cartman on the couch, showing him as he squirted some into the reservoir of the toy. Leaning back on his haunches, letting his robe fall open, Kenny made a show of slowly pushing the thing down to take in his hard cock, moaning and throwing his head back dramatically as the slick, textured passage accepted him. "Mmm, that's not bad...A bit small for me, but maybe I could just fuck this instead of you, huh?"

The look on Cartman's face got Kenny revved up further; open-mouthed and wide-eyed, sporting a darling tent in his bath robe; an expression tinged with voyeuristic arousal and mortification, watching how Kenny split and spread the tight artificial hole on his long, uncut cock. "You're drooling. You just gonna watch me?"

Working the lube in to the back of the sleeve, Kenny took a firm pace humping up into the toy, sending his balls slapping over the lip of the tube. "It's really tight...How long do you last fucking this thing, I wonder..." The imperfect, suctioning grip of it made for a racket of lewd slurping and hissing that sounded for each lunge in and out. It was so roughly stimulating he had to pull out a few times, grunting and slapping his cock to his stomach as he bulged and flexed, with gooey strands of sticky lube connecting the toy hole, hot and loose from his sudden urgent usage, to his twitching erection. "Cat got your tongue, fatass?"

"I'm just following your lead, Kenny." Eric gulped, finding his throat dry and his lips moist. "Well, I got your toy all warmed up for you." Kenny fish-hooked the orifice with his fingers and spread it to show off it's sloppy innards. He leaned forward, one hand holding the toy, the other undoing Eric's bath robe to get at his protruding member. Kenny briefly went down on him, long enough to get Eric moaning and slick, before swapping to use the toy. He tugged the bulky, plastic tube up and down and watched how Eric tried to fill out the toy after he had used it, digging himself against one wall or the other with a tilted rocking of his hips. 

"Looks like it feels good. It'll give you something to do while I fuck you up the ass." Cartman wordlessly begged for mercy, but Kenny antagonized him further by popping his balls into his mouth and sucking on them. Just the sort of thing Cartman would do to assert his dominance, but with Kenny performing the deed it was all Cartman could do not to go cross-eyed and bow-legged in submission. 

*Pop!* 

Kenny robbed him of that stimulation all at once, emptying his mouth and schlucking the sheathe off of Cartman's angry, throbbing cock in a sharp, reprimanding tug. "Bend over the back of the couch."

Cartman grunted, humbled and partially humiliated, hurrying up onto his knees with his forearms over the back of the couch, leaving his wet hard-on to dangle. Kenny propped the toy between a pair of throw cushions and let Cartman insert himself into it with a groan of relief which spiked into an obscene utterance, muffled against the couch as he was newly overwhelmed by Kenny gripping, slapping, and spreading his ass cheeks to start wriggling his tongue inside him. Nosing up his crack and tonguing deep he cranked Cartman on the toy until his whimpering jumped a pitch, and he denied him again by holding the toy orifice flush with his pelvis as he struggled at the cusp of release.

Kenny kneeled up on the couch behind Eric and draped over his back, leaving his spit to trail out of the live cocksleeve he intended to make use of, adding one generous squirt of lube to the works. He peeled his foreskin back and stirred his aching wood around Eric's rim as he whispered into his ear, "You're really close to cumming, and I haven't even started. I bet, as soon as I stick it in...You're gonna **cum**."

Eric bellowed and hid his burning red face, pushed up against the back of the couch as Kenny battered his way in with one push. Shoved forward into the far-end of the toy and getting penetrated much the same way simultaneously, Eric ejaculated so hard that Kenny could feel his taint throb against his balls. He felt utterly drained, but even as his milked cock went limp and slipped out of the sleeve, Kenny started to fuck him. He was prepared to moan shamefully into the cushions while he was ridden, but Kenny wanted to hear him moan unmuffled, and he tugged back on his hair to expose his lust-addled expression as he used up his slack, exhausted body for his masturbatory pleasure.

"S-Stop...God dammit...I'm going to..." Eric mewled, unable to maintain even a shred of dominance in his voice as Kenny took the lead, rapidly stroking into him fast enough to make his thick ass jiggle. Kenny took him in hand for a reach-around and kept the same dogged pace, wearing the both of them out. "You're going to cum again? Before I've got even one off inside you? Do it with me, baby. I'm almost there." Eric stifled his cries by craning back for a wet open-mouthed kiss. The pair of them stiffened up all over before wracking their bodies in a fit of shaking hips; Cartman popping a load between Kenny's knuckles as he was filled from behind, shivering for the feeling of spraying injection. The pair of them were panting and sweating, and Kenny helped ease him off the back of the couch to lay down on their sides, remaining fully inserted. Kenny sucked a remainder of salty cum and fried chicken grease off of his fingers and spooned with Eric as the television hummed away before them, admiring how warm and soft his thick insulated body was to hold onto.

"Come on, tell me I rocked your fucking world right there, dude." Kenny fished for a compliment, kissing up the back of Eric's ears, figuring they wouldn't be moving to clean up too soon. "You rocked my fucking world. I can't go again...Just don't let me fall asleep without cleaning up." Kenny reached and offered his chubby muse a breaded drumstick from his discarded plate as a treat. "If you fall asleep, I'll clean you with my tongue." 

Cartman gave a disgusted grunt, but he nipped bites of chicken and took deep, contented breaths all the same. Kenny felt confident that the good times were here to stay, but more importantly, he knew who the real sidekick of this duo was.


	9. Chapter 9

"I noticed that you've been smiling a lot lately, Eric."

Driving in to South Park as often as he did to see Butters, Bradley had been gracious enough to start picking up Cartman for his new cover job working banquet and catering at the hotel. 

"Love does that to a guy. Sex too. Love and sex though?" Cartman whistled, busily tapping his thumbs on the virtual keyboard of his cellphone. "It's a beautiful day, and I can't stop myself from smiling. You know what I'm talking about, don't you?"

"Butters and I are taking it slow."

"Yeah, I figured you were a virgin."

Bradley's modest smile leveled off with some mortification. "I'm not exactly holding myself for marriage. I just   
want my first to be...Special."

Cartman rolled his eyes. "Trust me Bradley, by the time you get that first over with? You're going to wish you'd been spending the whole time doin' it, because the time we have is precious. My first time was with a sex worker. Maybe it wasn't special like the lifetime channel said it would be, but it was a big relief."

Bradley shook his head, not even sparing his passenger a glance, focusing on highway traffic. "I don't understand that...And didn't you say that your first time was with your boyfriend?"

Cartman nodded, affirming, "right, we're dating now. The moral of the story is, don't make such a fuss over your first. Like, imagine waiting your whole life to try vanilla ice cream. Hey, idiot! Everyone's eating ice cream, and there are so many flavors, holding out for just vanilla is stupid."

Bradley paused thoughtfully. "Butters...I get the sense that he's experienced."

"I'm sure he'd be happy to teach you what he knows, Bradley. Whenever you're ready." Cartman could have mentioned how Butters and Kenny (and Kyle) had been declared at-risk to become sex addicts by a random CDC screening in school, but the CDC also said that he was too fat from eating fast food, so obviously they just hate freedom. 

Bradley continued to chew his bottom lip in serious contemplation. "Maybe you're right...Doing it in one of our bedrooms at home though, it seems wrong."Cartman stuffed his cellphone into his pocket and looked to Bradley incredulously. "Uh, derp? you work at a hotel, stupid." 

"It's a very expensive hotel."

Cartman threw up his hands and cast his eyes upon the closed sunroof, "Christ, give me strength! Look, just find a room that'll be empty for awhile and bang in it. There's bound to be rooms empty overnight. Or, if it's so important to you, you could pay for it."

Bradley had no further argument, he'd pay for a room. "We kind of got off on a tangent there. If you have a good thing going right now, have you thought about...Not being a career criminal?"

Cartman shrugged. "I only discuss business with business partners. Sounds to me like you and Butters are out of the business."

Bradley protested, "I was never in the business!"

"Well, if you want to make some money and get the honeymoon suite by the weekend, just remember that you can ask me."

The god-fearing driver gripped the wheel, feeling the threat of temptation into sin. The passenger beside him was at once cherubic and demonic, smiling earnestly, seguing into talking about the dishes he was hoping to present to a new client. 

Bradley interrupted the fat chef's flowery description of a veal dish with urgency, not daring to look at how Eric's smile would curl. "What would I have to do?"

"I'll be taking off work early today. If anyone asks, tell them I'm in the basement or the attic, looking for plates or whatever. Exactly three minutes after your shift ends, I'll be at the hotel exit facing onto the highway, and then it's business as usual. We pick up Butters from work, maybe get some KFC, and call it a day."

Bradley grimaced. "There's something you're not telling me."

Cartman points out to the distracted driver, "it's for the best that you don't know. Don't miss our turn."

The work day proceeded normally. They worked on the line making the buffet for breakfast, then they served it in the banquet hall. Omelets with caramelized peppers, onions, and chorizo sausage. Huckleberry and buckwheat waffles with cinnamon-infused knobs of butter to sit and melt on top. Toasted breads, fruit platters, brie wheels, and smoked salmon. Ice cold metal carafes of bloody mary, hot carafes of coffee, and fixings for mimosas. Always worth skipping breakfast at home to Cartman.

A few hours after breakfast they did a rush job helping with a buffet of barbecued hamburgers, fries, and herb salad for lunch, with soup for the seniors and stiff beers for everyone drinking in the afternoon.

"The schedule said we have a big client for a private event coming by, where the hell are they?"

The stature of such a person ought to be easy to pick out of a crowd, Cartman thought. They'd be someone that wasn't hunched over a plate or standing in line. Here on business. Dressing smartly. Like that woman with the clipboard. Big, black leather boots with high heels to give her the edge in height she wanted. Long, black hair. Beret...

"Oh, shit," Cartman blinked in disbelief. 

Wendy turned on a dime as if she heard Cartman's stomach dropping from the across the room and stormed over to him with an unflattering furrow in her brow. "You're the new chef the management was talking about? Of course there's a fucking hamburger buffet."

"Yeah, it's like my own personal kitchen back there. The head chef is kind of a senile mummy if you haven't noticed. It's a shame I'm moving away soon or I would go through with a coup d'état to replace him. I do have a more tasteful menu prepared, perhaps for some private event..."

"Absolutely not," Wendy balked, "You are not catering."

Cartman pleaded, "Wendy, I'm seriously, can we squash the beef?"

"Don't get flippant with me," Wendy warned, "You have yet to give me an apology that isn't a mad-lib of shit you think I want to hear."

"I am sorry!" Cartman insists, "but I have a lot to apologize for, are you going to hear every last one?"

Wendy tapped her heel impatiently.

"I'm sorry for not being sorry before. For never apologizing. Things used to work well around here, I'm the one that fucked it all up, and I wouldn't take any of the blame. I've been stuck spinning my wheels because I couldn't face up to any of it."

"That's...Interesting," Wendy mused, stopping herself from chewing on her pen. "Your doughy face is capable of expressing regret after all." She checked her clipboard to stall for time, looking around the spacious banquet hall. "What else?"

"I apologize for the...Multiple incidents at Token's house that necessitated police intervention. But you ought to know, that last time was to help Tweek."

"Getting together with Craig. Right. I don't approve of that," Wendy snapped, "Tweek is not stable."

Ever the devil's advocate, Cartman offered as much rebuttal as Wendy would care to listen to. "Well, Craig is fucking stagnant, and they have mutual feelings for each other. They're balanced together."

Wendy rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I really noticed that while they were pummeling each other and ruining the rose bushes."

"You just don't understand how romance between two hot-blooded men works!"

Wendy pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes, feeling a premonition to one of her regular headaches. "If Craig gets hurt, I'm putting it on you for playing cupid. Remember that."

"They'll be just fine. Would you like some hot lemon tea?" Cartman delicately put his hand to Wendy's shoulder, easing her toward the tea and coffee serving table. Wendy had a cup of tea, no sugar, and put up with Cartman kneading at her shoulders as it coincided with her headache passing. "So, I heard you patched things up with the mayor. You must be scrambling to get the money you need to skip town."

"Yeah, that's right. Maybe it's too much to ask for you to give me some work, but if you could please not get me fired from another job..."

"Don't get defensive," Wendy snapped, looking around again, gesturing to the open door facing the vacant outdoor seating area. "Follow me."

Wendy took smooth strides outside and Cartman trundled after, chilled through his apron and dress shirt by the weather outside. 

Wendy took a deliberate breath. "Okay. I will accept your apology, if, for old time's sake..." She trailed off, purposefully leaving room for Cartman to anticipate her next demand, giving a tight-lipped grin. "You get down on your hands and knees and kiss my boots." 

The affront was clear on the fat chef's face. If it were anyone else, he would refuse, or at least plot a convoluted retribution after the fact. Still, one does not trifle with Wendy Testaburger. If it suited her to have him grovel again for the sake of amusement, he'd better get to it before she changed her mind.

She watched Cartman follow through with an artifice of humility, watched him getting on his knees, bending his head down, kissing her boots. The left, and then the right. He was slow to do it, but it was over much too fast for her. She flipped her hair to hang over her other shoulder, gruffly commanding, "That's enough."

She waited for him to rise before continuing, "just remember, that's where you stand. You are utterly beneath me."

Cartman brushed off his knees as he stood, less reactive to this treatment than he would have been in the past. "Sounding pretty sultry there Wends, am I going to have to start paying sixty-nine cents a minute for you to keep talking?"

Wendy took another drink of hot tea and cleared her throat, suppresing the thought of really putting Cartman in his place, not at all amused by him trying to quip and have the last word. "Shut the fuck up. I am not getting sultry with you. I just had something of a nostalgic passing fancy. Let me see the menu you made."

Cartman handed her the bill he'd left neatly left unfolded in his apron, with black ink carefully scripted in cursive. 

Wendy looked over it with a critical set of eyes. "This has you written all over it. It will need some serious revisions." She stuck the menu to her clipboard and began to scribble over his practiced writ. "Nothing wrapped in bacon. Nothing soaked in alcohol. No foie gras. No veal. Ugh, I feel like I'm putting on weight just reading this fucking thing."

Cartman puffed up with irritation but kept his objections to himself, stepping beside Wendy and pawing at the clipboard to offer his own revisions. "Alright, so it's a bit flashy and gastro-heavy. I can re-write it. If you want local there's got to be beef, lamb, or trout."

Wendy deliberated at that, making Cartman hold her tea, taking full dominion over her clipboard. "I want all three as separate options for the main course."

Cartman weighed in where he could. "That's going to bottleneck the kitchen. Let me do a trout tartare starter, beef carpaccio or spareribs as a secondary, and roast lamb as the main."

Wendy nodded and penned her loopy script to the menu, "That's more sensible. I see that you've cleared it with Tweek Bros. to serve coffee?"

"Yes, he's hoping to dump as much coffee as he can as soon as possible, so it's coming at a great discount. I thought I would pair that with a selection of biscuits and sorbet or gelato for dessert."

Wendy pursed her lips. "That sounds...Good. I want a revised menu by noon tomorrow. If you don't blow the dinner, I might have another job for you. If you do blow the dinner, I'm going to castrate you. Bye!" She left the offer as vague as that, leaving Cartman holding her tea as she marched away with purpose.

Eric sipped her tea, mumbling to himself. "That went better than I thought it would."

The rushed lunch service bled into a rushed dinner service, with Cartman regularly checking the clock as he worked. Bread baskets with hummus and a variety of flavored butters. Vegetable medley, silky mashed potatoes, and cheap cuts of steak dressed as expensive cuts that multiple people would remark on as being among the finest they had tasted in some time. He stealthily floated the idea of a pie dessert as a late-night special and the resident head chef was on a tangent about how to make the perfect pie, looking for an ancient recipe, giving Cartman the wiggle room to slip out the back door early.

At an Apple store not more than 1000 feet from the hotel, cashier Lynsey and manager Haiden were counting down the minutes to closing, ringing up a customer buying a new case to protect their iphone. Lost in their own private thoughts, all three of them were startled by an unmarked van coming to a stop just outside the glass storefront. 

Three men in white boiler suits and gasmasks stormed the door with handguns. With purpose, the three robbers quickly isolated each person in the store.

Haiden quickly buckled and put his hands up as the tallest among the gunmen threatened, "Opened safe or closed-casket. Your choice."

Lynsey struggled to open the register, unnerved at the way that the gun pointed at her rattled in the grip of the robber shouting at her, boxing her in behind the counter.

"Get the money into the bag or we'll all going to die! Hurry, please!"

The hapless customer, whose name was Filip, shrieked when the greasy-smelling masked man charged him and took his phone, throwing it onto the concrete floor.

"No phones! You're a bystander, so start acting like it!"

With the shouting giving way to terse silence and the shuffling of money, the fat thief took notice of the in-store music playing. 

"For fucks sake, apple is still pushing U2?" 

Absently keeping his gun trained on Filip, he went behind the counter and started fiddling with the macbook connected to the speakers behind the sales counter, gasping, "Oh shit, they've got my jam."

"Stop fucking around!" 

The gunman on safe duty emerged from the back room, carrying a loaded duffel bag in one hand, prodding Haiden along in front of him with the gun in his other hand.

"If this robbery has a soundtrack, it's going to be my jam, not fucking U2!"

The change in music playing prompted the fat one to get down and sing along as the others tried to hurry. Lynsey remained flabbergasted as the man that robbed her thanked her for co-operating. "I just want you to know that this gun wasn't loaded!"

Dancing or not, the shuffling fatty warned Filip. "His isn't loaded, but mine is."

With the cashier, manager, and customer corralled into the back office without their phones, the robbers backed away until they cleared the front door, dashing for the idle van to drive away from the scene. With no alarm and a delayed call to the police, $12,000 was stolen from the store, with collateral damages amounting to one iphone 6.

Tumbling in the back of the van, kicking off the boiler suit, Cartman was dropped off in the bushes by the highway. He checked his watch. He was 96 seconds early.

Tweek perched his feet on the dashboard, contorting in his seat to strip out the stuffy white suit, holding the wheel for Kenny to do the same when he was finished. The world buzzed and burned with bright oranges and light blues as adrenaline crashed and foamed in his ears. "It worked! It worked? Jesus Christ, what if it didn't work!?"

"We definitely lucked out." Kenny smiled, rolling down the window to let cold, rushing air dry the sweat on his forehead. "I liked your approach in there. Unhinged? Scares the shit out of people."

"My approach?" Tweek asked obliviously, wrapping his arms underneath his knees, aching for a cup of coffee. "This is like some weird performance art for you and Cartman, isn't it? Man, I was losing it for real. It seemed too easy. Is it always like that?"

"No, that's smooth as it gets, Tweek. I'm starting to think you're a really lucky guy."

"Me? Seriously?" Tweek was astounded. 

"Sure. I'd try pushin' that luck if I were you. Ride the wave."

"I don't know..." If luck was something that came and went, what should he use his good luck on?

The van was abandoned near a closed construction zone, with Kenny and Tweek wheeling a junky motorcycle out of the back, riding away with the money and discarded suits in side-saddles. On the ride home, Tweek morbidly admired the way that Kenny made dangerous things seem like mere amusements. Even while blazing down the highway, precariously balanced between two wheels, Kenny was at peace with the specter of death behind him.

At the Donovan's shoe store, Butters wistfully looked out the window waiting for his boyfriend to pick him up from work as Clyde talked his ear off. 

"Craig told me he was cleaning Tweek's house. I mean, apparently the place is already spotless, but Craig. Cleaning! Craig does not clean. He once went an entire month without wearing a clean shirt. I don't mean he wore a dirty shirt. He was bare-chested under his jacket, and whenever we were inside he would just lounge about without a shirt on like a grungy fashion model." Clyde was sitting up on the counter, drumming a pair of pencils over it, expectantly looking to Butters for feedback.

"Oh, you want to know what I think?" Butters shifted on his tired feet, very eager to get off work and stop dealing with shoes he wasn't going to wear himself. "Maybe he wants to turn over a new leaf. Maybe he doesn't have much else to do. Aren't you friends with Tweek?"

"I dunno...He's kinda weird. Like, tinfoil hat weird."

"Maybe he has some...Hysterical tendencies, but I don't think he's weirder than anyone else I know. What do you think Craig likes about him?"

"I have no fucking idea. I think Tweek is like, his sugar daddy or something. They get high, have sex, watch Red Racer, and Craig gets a little extra pocket money now and then."

Butters got the impression that Clyde was projecting, but he tried to remain positive and encouraging. "A good friend would know. I bet Craig knows what you like about Bebe."

"She's super hot. Way smarter than me, but still really patient and understanding. Like, she encourages me to express myself? I just want to be a better person because of her." Clyde went on like this, losing the strain of the conversation entirely. 

Butters wished him the best, but he dropped the conversation and nodded along, drawling 'uh huh' as he looked out the window.

Clyde sniffed and shut his watering eyes tight. "I just...I love her so much! I really think that she's the woman I want to marry, and I just wish my mom could be there to see..!" Clyde muffled a wail with his forearm and went off to cry in the break room. This made Butters feel bad about not giving his full attention before, so he took his eyes off the window to go to the break room and pat clyde on the shoulder. 

"Hey, c'mon there, fella...She's watchin' you in heaven, and I'm sure she wants an invitation."

"Thank you, Butters." Clyde hiccuped and blubbered, trying his best to smile. Butters got him some water from the cooler and some doritos from the employee snack cabinet.

"I can close up the shop," Clyde mumbled between bites and sips and sniffles. "You're right about Tweek. I never really made the effort to get to know him, and I've been a bad friend to Craig because of it. I want Craig to be my best man. Well, him or Token. Probably Token actually, because then Token will pick me to be his best man." The running spigots behind Clyde's eyes went dry, and he reached for his phone to text Bebe. 

"Well, that all sounds swell, Clyde. I'll save the date as soon as you've got one. Happy trails!" 

They waved and smiled and parted, with Butters running to the door, seeing Bradley's car outside. Cartman graciously gave up the passenger seat in the name of love, and once he was inside the car, Butters leaned to meet his boyfriend halfway for a kiss. The two up front chattered on and on about their social interactions of the day: a waitress filing for a restraining order against an estranged husband, a trio of guys that spent over an hour debating what color trainers to get to coordinate at the track, an old man that complained his spoon was too big, and a mother with an unattended child that tied shoelaces together.

"What about you, Eric?" Butters asked, thoughtfully inclusive as always.

"I've got the head chef job catering for a fancy event. I don't even remember what for, but Wendy was the one that came down to see me."

"Wendy hired you?" Butters asked incredulously before backtracking, "I guess you had a good menu."

"Nah, she hated it, I have to finish re-writing it by tomorrow. She's doing me a favor for whatever reason. Since I'm leading, I'm going to see if I can hire Kenny on as a server for the night."

"If he's not available, you can call me Eric. I wouldn't mind working with Bradley to serve food." Butters smiled, getting to hold hands with his boyfriend all the way home.

"All depends on what Kenny's up to, I guess..."

At that moment in time, Kenny was just dropping off Tweek, ready to go and see the mayor about laundering their dirty money as usual. Tweek wanted to be polite and invite Kenny in for coffee, but he could sense Craig watching them somewhat severely from the window. He could only wave goodbye and head inside, mentally mapping his alibi for the day.

Craig did not look pleased to be asking, but all the same he couldn't keep quiet. "What have you been up to?"

"Ah, well, I was looking around for a new car. I don't want to hold on to the one my dad gave me any more, and it feels like I have to fix it every other month anyway."

"Find something you like then?"

"Nah," Tweek fidgeted. "But, on the ride home, I thought about the bike you used to have, and maybe I could buy a new one..."

"Riding on one of those doesn't make you...Nervous?"

"Not if you're driving. I trust you."

Craig was caught off guard at that, dropping the line of questions he had drafted over the lazy day spent in. "Well, if you're serious, let me try to find a decent bike."

"I'm serious, I'll pay for it. You know I hate driving, so whatever I get I'll be asking you to drive me around either way...A bike would be cheap, and fun too."

Craig got swept up in the romanticism of sharing a bike on the open road before rationalizing, "You ought to keep the car awhile longer."

"Yeah, alright. So, what have you been up to today?"

Craig looked a little irritated at that and gestured with his arms wide, cryptically explaining that 'this' is what he's been up to. "I cleaned, I actually did go shopping this time, and I cooked, if you haven't noticed."

"Gah, sorry, and thank you! I'm going to go wash up really quick." 

Tweek leaned in for a kiss, keeping some distance during a hug, fearing that the concealed firearm on him would bring more inconvenient questions. He was able to stash it back in his personal safe and use the restroom before returning to the dining room to find Craig plating dinner. 

"Cooking vegetarian is new for me, feels like there's only three-fourths of a meal here." Craig muttered, indicting his rice, chickpea, and onion dish, with roasted sweet potatoes and asparagus on the side.

"It looks really good!" Tweek said gratefully, unable to smell it for the moment as he was busy brewing coffee, complimenting the taste once he had finally sat down to have a bite. Unnerved by the tick of a clock and slow chewing over dinner, he mentioned, "I made, like, a big business deal today."

"Yeah, big enough that I heard about it. You're helping cater some event?"

Tweek nodded, "Would you come with me?"

"Sure, I need the work."

"Not just for work!" Tweek sharply cringed, "Argh! As a date!"

"Oh!" Craig thought about how his friends would react. They might privately sanction him again, or they might suddenly turn over a new leaf and be overly congratulatory. Either way, he was probably going to flip them off for getting on his nerves. "Yeah, I mean, we're dating, so we ought to be going on dates."

"S-Sorry, I didn't mean to make you into a homebody." Tweek looked down and forked at his sweet potato, realizing they hadn't been getting out much at all.

"You didn't make me a homebody," Craig warned, reaching to grab Tweek's hand, "but I am going a little stir-crazy."

Tweek rubbed his thumb over Craig's knuckles, feeling sorry still, thinking Craig had been over-accommodating him since Tweek never went out on his own. "Let's look at bikes tomorrow, maybe finish moving the rest of your stuff in...?"

"Sounds fun."

"It does?"

Craig turned the hand Tweek had been holding to flip him off. He meant what he said. Pulling attention, his cell phone vibrated with an overly emotional text from Clyde:

'dude i love you im so sorry ive been a shitty friend dude if ur happy with tweek im happy 4 u lets hang out or double date mmk? :^)'

Craig rolled his eyes, "Oh my god."

"What is it?" Tweek asked.

Craig would much rather spend the rest of the next day moving and haggling over motorcycles than some farce of a double date. "Would you mind if I invited over Clyde and Bebe sometime? For coffee or something?"

"Sure!" Tweek said. 'Coffee' was all that he needed to hear. 

There was a pregnant pause after that, with Craig looking at him expectantly after bing initially surprised at Tweek's acquiescence.

"You're not going to ask to go on a double date with Cartman and Kenny?"

"Agh! Oh god, no!" Tweek cried out emphatically. He'd pushed all the luck he cared to, and then some. He would get the buffer of money he needed while he was stuck waiting for Tweek Bros. to be liquidated, and he wasn't planning on meeting up with them again soon after that. Whether or not they planned it, he kept ending up as an accomplice for those two, and his involvement with them had already passed its logical conclusion. No matter how legit and on the level they seemed, working catering and auto-repair, there was always a scheme cooking between them...

At that same moment in time, Kenny was just pulling up to Cartman's house, revving up to get his sluggish partner out the door faster.

"God damnit, I just got home!" Eric complained, having just recently been dropped off by Bradley.

"Hop on." Kenny coaxed smoothly, passing Cartman a helmet.

The bike creaked and sagged a bit as he did, but it kept its balance.

"Yeah, alright, you look hella hot driving a motorcycle." Cartman tributed, wrapping arms around the driver, sensing Kenny fishing for a compliment. It was a shouting match over the roaring engine, but he asked further, "Where are we going?"

"Is that rhetorical?"

"No, it's not rhetorical, where are we going on this ratty motorcycle!"

Kenny sighed, "I'm trying to get into the biker spirit over here."

"Well, spirit me away to the fucking KFC, you flaming biker.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god I haven't updated in months, please strike me dead. I've been thinking of this silly story a lot too, that's the worst part. Here's hoping I'm quicker about the next chapter. Believe it or not, we're not far from the end of the story. Once I finish it I'm thinking of working on another Style fic, because clearly I don't know when to quit.   
> Thanks so much for reading, please review with whatever you have in mind, it would make me very happy.


	10. Chapter 10

_First_

_Summer Vegetable Vichyssoise and Rainbow Trout Pate on Toasted Baguette_

_Second_

_Ancho Chile and Coffee-Braised Beef Short Ribs with Mushrooms_

_Third_

_Lemon and Herb-Crusted Rack of Lamb with Mustard Green Salad_

_Dessert_

_Assorted Gelato and Biscuits_

_-South Park Honor Society Awards Banquet Menu by Head Chef Eric Cartman_

Dressed in a crisp, black suit like the rest of the hotel serving staff, Kenny snuck up on the busy Head Chef and dunked his pinky finger into the sauce accompanying the short ribs to have a taste for himself. The acidity of the coffee broke down the meat for a melt-in-your-mouth quality, the chile gave the sauce a smoky taste with mild heat, and the mushrooms soaked it all in. “Say, that's good enough to die for!”

Cartman exploded and threw droplets of sweat about as he turned to brandish a knife at his head waiter, “You are going to die for it if you don't get the fuck out of my kitchen and get back to the banquet floor, you finger-licking-white-trash-blonde-haired dandy fuck!”

Kenny gave Eric a pat on the cheek and handed him a glass of water, briefly admiring him in his messy, white uniform and apron. “You need to hydrate and take a deep breath, this isn't Hell's Kitchen. Everything is going really great out there.”

Cartman scowled and gulped down the water in a rush, only to seize and cough and thump his fist against his chest, sputtering, “God dammit- juniors! Finish the plating, no inconsistencies!”

The two of them took the back door exit from the kitchen with Cartman still coughing, trying to clear his throat, while Kenny slapped him on the back until it cleared.

“My two weeks are up tonight, Kenny. I feel like I'm cooking the banquet to my own going away party.”

One inconvenient truth after another broke wind in Cartman's mind and put a look of disgust on his face.

“All this time, I've been serving Wendy and her asshole friends. And they're kicking me out of town. Don't they know that I could have poisoned them a thousand times over? Why haven't I? Could this be more fucked up?”

“It's not like _nothing_ has changed, right?”

Cartman grabbed Kenny around his waist and pulled them hip to hip with a sigh, “No, I think we've gotten closer. You're coming with me, aren't you?”

“Yeah,” Kenny replied easily, resting his cheek on the top of Cartman's head. “Until you piss me off.”

“Until you piss _**me**_ off, you dildo.”

“Speaking of...” Kenny nipped at Cartman's ear and squeezed up handfuls of hips, making Cartman thrash in his grip and derail from his train of thought.

“Kenny, fuck off! I have to make sure they don't botch the lamb, this is crucial!”

“They've got that meat under control. But do you have _this_ meat under control?”

The head chef was pinned to the door as the head waiter groped him with vigor.

“Faa...Fucking swear I'll kick you in the nuts Kenny, not now!”

“You take cooking too seriously,” Kenny cooed, making Eric pant out white puffs of air under the night sky. He mentally counted sixty seconds before stopping, using a finger to scoop up the beads of pre-fluid at Eric's tip for a taste.

Cartman practically teared up as Kenny's hand slipped out of his pants. He was still raging hard, thrusting at air in frustration.

Kenny popped his finger out of his mouth and shrugged, “well, back to work.”

Leaving Cartman to collect himself, he moved through the kitchen to return to the hotel's banquet hall, scanning the crowd to check on the rest of the wait staff. Butters had joined on with Bradley, and he flagged them down from the other side of the room, power-walking over to them. He noticed that the Second was being served to a line of hungry people who would take a plate and find their way to one of many round tables with white table cloth reserved by name.

“Looking good out here. You two want to grab a drink after work, before Cartman and I leave town?”

Butters and Bradley looked at each other in such a way that made Kenny suspicious.

“Sorry Kenny, but we have plans of our own,” Butters volunteered to speak on their combined behalf before turning to ask Bradley, “Could you give me a second with Kenny?”

Butters waited until Bradley was off on his own headed toward the kitchen before speaking up.

“You ought to know I'm real sore about Eric using Bradley as a getaway driver. We had decided we weren't going to be involved. I don't care how Cartman talked him into it, that's just what he does, he talks people into doing stuff they know they ought not to, and I've had it. No more. Understand?”

“Sorry, Butters,” Kenny apologized meekly, not one to make excuses, knowing Cartman could do that himself.

“Well, shucks, I'm not _that_ sore, it'd be hypocritical of me, but we've decided to stay out of trouble from now on, and I suggest you and Eric do the same.”

“Sure, Butters, thanks.”

Suggest all he like, Kenny and Cartman couldn't keep out of trouble if they tried.

“Come back to visit soon,” Butters hugged his friend and disengaged to find Bradley.

Kenny did a fresh ocular sweep of the banquet hall before settling on the open bar. Tweek was making coffee and Craig was mixing drinks. Wendy and the rest of the gang were sat at the bar having a laugh, so Kenny made to approach.

Bebe was hanging off of Clyde with a new piece of jewelry on her ring finger, sounding especially loud and lush, “We had just gotten off of _It's a Small World,_ where it funnels you right into the gift shop, and there was this little girl in a princess dress throwing a fit, crying ' _daddy, buy my somethiiing'_ and I just thought it was hysterical, like it doesn't even matter what her daddy buys her but he just has to buy her _something_. I wanted to make it into my new catchphrase but Wendy didn't think it was very funny.”

Wendy sighed and shook her head, “I'm more morally opposed to it than anything, even if it was a little funny.”

“Irish coffee,” Kenny interrupted, leaning toward Tweek. Everyone in the immediate area save for Tweek gave him the stink-eye.

“Kenny, you should be working. The Second was almost late,” Wendy chided.

“Everything is going smoothly, and smooth is fast. What did you think of the second?”

“Very heavy,” Wendy said right away , unintentionally cutting off Token from saying, “I loved it!”

“It could have been more complex,” Wendy added. “Can you just, go and check on the Third to make sure it's out on time? I have special guests coming; they're late from a flight, they're famished, and one of them is hypoglycemic.”

“Yeah, I'll get right on that,” Kenny cleared his throat, “later Tweek. Clyde, congrats.”

“Thanks, Kenny!”

He could still hear Bebe as he walked away, saying, “Did you have to send the cute one away too? Anyway, let me tell you about Clyde crying through his proposal during the Fantasmic water show, it was the sweetest thing ever...”

Cartman was sporting fresh burns on his knuckles when Kenny found him back in the kitchen., giving up pan duty to fuss with presentation.

“Let me get you some bandages.”

“I'm fine!” Cartman shouted and then directed his shouting to the busboys, “Get those moving, pass them down a line, and put them on tables! VIPs first! Then I want every rack of coffee cups we have in this window immediately!”

Kenny retrieved some bandages from the first aid kit and steered Cartman toward the sink to rinse his hands with cool water and treat his burns, fighting him every step of the way like an uncooperative tandem bike partner. He could tell he was being a pest, but he couldn't abide with being ignored. Wendy's cold treatment had really stuck in his craw. “You want to make some trouble once we're done here?”

“That depends on what kind of trouble.”

“Up to you.”

“Maybe. I'll let you know.”

“Can you come out of the kitchen soon?”

“Yeah, I'll be right out.”

Kenny left Cartman to fuss and be selectively perfectionist, seeing to the plating of the Third with the rest of the wait staff. The smells of it made him hungry. The lemon and the choice of herbs were strong and brought a lot of lift compared to the Second. He could just imagine the taste of the peppery mustard greens next to it too.

Plate here, plate there, fix the alignment of the silverware, brush crumbs off the tabletops, refill water. The Mayor and her guests got their plates first. Where were those two 'special' guests Wendy mentioned that were showing up fashionably late? He went to check the one VIP table that was still marked reserved and unoccupied. They were from a Greenpeace “Save the Whales” team, but what were their names? He leaned closer to see when a voice overtook his senses.

“Kenny?”

That voice shocked him, as if he'd been camping and heard a grizzly bear outside of his tent.

“Stan?”

Kenny turned around to see Stan and Kyle in matching gray suits, looking at him as if he was the one completely out of place here. He couldn't ask what they were doing there, because he already knew, and he dreaded being asked the same. Being caught out as a waiter, pulling out chairs for his friends receiving grants for ecological preservation, it made him feel small. Some of Cartman's pride must have rubbed off on him, being so concerned with appearances wasn't like him...

“How are you...?”

Stan threw Kenny a merciful softball of a question as he stalled at the plate. Kyle was looking at him much more critically, judging behind a pair of obnoxious Gucci eyeglasses.

“Doing great,” Kenny blurted. “And yourself?”

“Good, a little hungry and jet-lagged, but it'll pass.”

So ended that thread of small-talk.

Kyle threw out the next question predictably enough, fast and down the middle, “what are you doing here?”

Don't make me say it, Kenny faltered.

He had done nothing more than stay in South Park, spinning his wheels in snowbanks, never wandering far from his grave.

_'I'm here to fill up your water goblets and hope your spare change sprinkles on me like so much liquid waste out of your bladder,'_ is what slithered in the back of his mind, but all that came out of his mouth was, “Oh, well, you see...”

“He's my plus one.”

A meaty, bandaged hand clapped onto his shoulder. Cartman had touched down like a bolt of lightning in a black suit of his own to support Kenny.

“And what are _you_ doing here?” Kyle sneered freely now, crossing his arms.

“I'm the head chef,” Cartman gestured to himself and then an approaching server with plates, “and here comes the Third. You better dig in before you pass out, Kyle. Mind if we sit with you?”

Kyle was already seating himself as Cartman talked, slouching close to the plate and sniffing it suspiciously, cutting a piece of lamb off the rack to eat.

“It's not bad.”

Cartman sat down without a formal return to his invitation, with Stan and Kenny following suit. “How generous of you,” the chef scoffed before reading the reserved title on the table aloud, “Save the whales, huh?”

Everyone at the table knew Cartman couldn't care less about most endangered animals despite living like a panda bear, so this thread of conversation did not last long either. Long story short, Stan and Kyle are big on charity work now, regularly meeting with Wendy and Token for travel and work with Greenpeace. They were able to meet up at Disneyland recently after volunteering to help clean an oil slick out at the California coast. Stan kept it to himself, but Clyde had totally ruined his own plan to give Kyle a Disney marriage proposal by doing it before him.

As far as Cartman was concerned, Stan and Kyle were crooks in their own right, all of their charity was balanced out by the smug they trailed wherever they go. They were a part of manufacturing the narrative that global corporate consumption was being fought by hemp tote bags and donating 5% of proceeds to a village in Africa. Maybe Kyle had a niggling feeling while instagramming a duckling freshly cleansed of crude oil that they could do better, but Stan was probably still naive enough to believe in it all.

Kenny scooted his chair closer to Cartman. Kyle raised an eyebrow and put his fork down on the dinner plate he'd quickly picked clean, leaving a set of curved white lamb bones. Stan was still chomping at his, not unlike a dog.

“You and Cartman are...?”

“Moving out of South Park,” Kenny answered, with Cartman answering simultaneously, “Moving in together.”

Stan asked Kenny, “Do you still have the truck?” and Kyle didn't care for his wistful tone.

“Well, I've done so much work on it, it's like the truck of Theseus.”

Stan smiled because he managed to get one of those collegiate-sounding references for once. “Not sticking around to take over your dad's shop?”

“'Not over my cold, dead body' was the end of our last talk about that,” Kenny laughed.

Cartman was now equally as irked as Kyle. They weren't supposed to be talking so friendly with each other, this was supposed to be painful and awkward for everyone involved.

“...And Cartman, you're somehow the head chef at this hotel? Shouldn't you be banned from food preparation for life?”

“Hey, if they fired every fry cook that farted on a burger, there'd be no one left.”

“You are completely abhorrent,” Kyle laughed in spite of himself at Cartman's enduring shamelessness. “How long have you been working here?”

“Oh, just a week or so.”

“Did you kill the last chef in charge or something?”

“I made him an offer he couldn't refuse.”

“Wow, that Marlin Brando impression is really coming along, they might let you back into NAMBLA at this rate.”

After talking awhile, Kyle decided that Cartman was at least tolerable in small doses. If he was with Kenny now then all the better, no need to repeat the events of Kenny's 21st...

When the waiters came around to deliver dessert, Kyle noticed something out of place. “Why is Kenny wearing the same suit as the rest of the waiters?”

“Not all of us can afford custom-tailored suits, Kyle,” Cartman retorted with feigned offense.

Kenny gave an overwrought sigh, “The dry cleaners hadn't finished working on my gown either.”

Kyle adjusted his glasses, picking for more inconsistencies, “What is Butters doing here?”

“Oh, he's wait staff,” Cartman admitted freely, not sparing the same dignity for Butters. “But just for tonight, he's working at Clyde's dad's shoe store mostly.”

Kenny explained further, “his boyfriend Bradley helped Cartman get the job here.”

“I see Craig at the bar, maybe I should go and say hi...” Stanley offered innocently before Kyle snagged him by the sleeve like a haunted rose bush. “Oh, no you don't.”

Kyle wiped his glasses clean quickly and put them back on for a clearer look at the bar.

“Is that Tweek with him? I thought they wanted to kick each other's asses.”

“What _don't_ they want to do to each other's asses,” Cartman guffaws.

“Shut up, they are not.”

“They are too! Kenny and I set them up.”

“Why would you do that??”

“It's a long story.”

Kenny had one of those 'I-know-something-you-don't-know' smiles on, unable to hide it from Kyle.

“Whatever, I don't give a shit, sounds boring,” Kyle lied.

“Kyle, Token waved at me.”

“Well, wave back at him, Stan! Honestly!”

“But I think he wants me to go over there.”

“I'm coming with you.”

Kyle stood up and firmly took Stan's hand for the walk over.

There was a long pause at the table as Cartman and Kenny watched Stan and Kyle. Kenny spoke first as Cartman finished his gelato.

“What do you think?”

Cartman put down his spoon and leaned back into his chair thoughtfully. “Well, I hate their gay little salon haircuts, and they wear too much fucking cologne.”

Kenny laughed, “Man, I cannot wait to get your dick into my mouth, that is exactly what I was going to say. Let's get some drinks.”

Tweek was beginning to experience something of a sensory overload with the groups that came to huddle around the bar. Craig's friends and Tweek's...Well, he shouldn't call them friends, they just swapped him in for Kenny's absence one year and swapped him back out with a consolation gift package. With all of these people in the same space it seemed inevitable that someone was going to start shit, especially now that most of them were drinking.

Token made eye contact with Tweek and then spoke up., “hey Wendy, we should close the bar down, or at least give Tweek and Craig a break.

Wendy replied with some suspicion, “You just want to go back there yourself, don't you?”

“I think I make a good bartender.”

“You want to go behind the bar and start juggling the bottles.”

“Well...”

“Go ahead. Craig, Tweek, you're off-duty.”

“We're going to take off,” Craig started pulling on his jacket as Clyde and Bebe went “aww!” and begged him to stay.

“Goodbye...!” Tweek bid farewell to no one specific, smiling gratefully at Craig, stepping after him with a spring in his step, with shouting voices quickly fading behind them.

“Thank you so much,” he sighed.

“I could tell you were grinning and bearing it.”

“Sorry.”

“You don't have to apologize. I don't want to stick around either. I just want a nice and boring evening in after work.”

“Me too.”

Back at the bar, Cartman urped after a shot of cinnamon liqueur, “You know they're goin' to the bone zone.”

Kyle pulled a thirsty Stan away from the bar, hooked about the arm, announcing, “Hey, I think the mayor is finally getting off her ass to give the grants out, Stan and I better put our feet on the deck for that.”

There really wasn't much ceremony behind it; Mayor McDaniels had long grown tired of parading people onto a stage one at a time in awards show fashion. Invite them to a banquet, hand them a check, keep an office aide on hand to take a picture for the paper. Done and done.

Wendy had been quiet, but she'd stopped nervously watching Token juggle bottles, showing off what he learned at that 'Performance Mixology' class. She was chewing the end of a plastic toothpick with a gin martini waiting for her on the bar, looking at Cartman until he looked back. “Can I talk to you really quick in private?”

Cartman looked at Kenny to express 'I'm as lost as you are' as succinctly as he could through eye contact before agreeing and following her back to the bar's half-sized storage room.

She handed him an envelope.

Cartman inspected the contents and found more money than he had been promised for his and Kenny's work at the banquet. “What's this?”

“It's your pay,” Wendy answered.

“And the rest?”

Wendy spoke loud and clear on the matter, “to convince you not to work for the mayor anymore. Don't take another job from her.”

“Yeah, I'll think about it.”

“Cartman,” Wendy couldn't stress the point further, “she's going to get you killed. You stopped working for her once before, didn't you?”

“Yeah. Because I don't like being told what to do.”

Wendy winced and pinched at her brow feeling another headache coming on. “You have enough, right? Just stop playing, you're playing with your life.”

“Too little, too late, Wendy. I can't stop now.”

“Yes you can! You can stop-”

“I can't! Wendy!”

Wendy's features slackened, fed up with his pig-headedness. “Forget it. Just go Cartman, get out of my sight. I tried to warn you.”

Cartman left the supply room.

Seeing the kinetic way he barreled out of his meeting with Wendy, Kenny put himself in Eric's path, planting a hand on his chest to halt him. “Hey. We should probably think about hitting the road. I can drive.”

“What about making some trouble, Kenny? I was just going to ask the mayor to set up something lucrative for us.”

“I don't want to go too far out of our way. Getting to our new place is sounding like enough trouble for tonight after all.”

An uncomfortable pause before Eric came to terms. “Fine, that's fine.”

Cartman was still raring to go. He wanted to get his hands on a lot of money. With just the two of them, they needed connections for the opportunity to make that much. But he didn't want to fight with Kenny. Cartman led the way over to the mayor, biting the inside of his cheek,waiting for her to be disengaged from conversation with anyone.

“Well, McDaniels, this is it, I'm leaving South Park. Are you happy?”

“I'm very happy. You've been nothing but a pain in the ass your entire life. Good work on the banquet, though. At least our business ended on a high note.”

“What about our deal? We made plans.”

“You made plans. You're not working in this town anymore, and that's about as far as my jurisdiction goes. You're on your own now, kid. It's nothing personal.”

Kenny interceded, Cartman looking ready to lash out. “We'll be going now.”

The mayor offered, “Kenny, are you certain you don't want to stay?”

“Yeah, I'm leaving with Cartman.”

“Well, it's your choice. Goodbye, boys. Drive safely,” the mayor reached out to shake their hands and off they went.

Outside the hotel, on the way to Kenny's loaded truck, Cartman unfurled the note the mayor had discreetly passed to him. It had the address for a highway gas station and the following message: _“Same as last job. Take product and cash. Metallic-blue SUV, license plate CK-7502. 10K between you two.”_

Cartman crumpled the note up and left it in a pool of slush beside the truck, climbing in through the passenger-side door.

Dimmed headlights on the road ahead of them, mile markers and peals of snow whizzing by, radio static preferable to the taste of local stations. Everything outside the truck was cold and blue, while everything inside was warm and orange. Leaving town like this was nostalgic, but Cartman was leaving South Park for good this time.

With a brief look away from the road toward his passenger, Kenny noticed two things; Cartman was deep in thought, and there was a bulge around his left pants pocket. Reaching and groping, Kenny asked, “Hey, what's that lump down there?”

“That's our pay,” Cartman huffed and scooted closer, flashing the roll of cash.

“That's a fine chunk of change,” Kenny whistled. “I'd like to give my share to Karen, can we go visit her tomorrow?”

“It already is tomorrow,” Cartman mumbled with an abrupt drowsiness, resting his head on Kenny's shoulder.

“You know what I mean.”

“Sure,” Cartman yawned, resting his eyes a moment before Kenny intentionally jostled him.

“Hey, don't go to sleep on me, or else I'll go to sleep too. Let's talk.”

“About what?”

“Funny seeing Stan and Kyle, huh?”

“Let's talk about something else, I hate those assholes,” Cartman groaned and fiddled with the radio until something unoffensive to his taste came along; an 'oldies' channel, which meant the 1980s these days.

“We never really did talk about them,” Kenny pointed out. Maybe in passing, but there was a lack of resolution. How should Cartman phrase it?

“Do you want to go to Disneyland?”

“What's that got to do with Stan and Kyle?”

“I don't know, it's like, a metaphor for what they have and we don't.”

Kenny thought about it awhile. “I'd love to be able to pay for Karen to go, but I could live without going there myself.”

He could imagine Stan and Kyle having a blast there, but he and Cartman would be constantly agitated by the costs, the crowds, and the lines- until they ended up doing something that got them banned for life. Roller coasters didn't do much for him anyway.

Kenny took his right hand off the wheel and hung it over Cartman's shoulder, giving him a tight squeeze against his chest. “You know what? Fuck Disneyland, this is the magic kingdom.”

“You're just saying that,” Cartman said. Everyone wanted to go to Disneyland.

“You're the one just saying stuff. You want to save the whales too? I thought we didn't give two shits about whales. I'm not gonna be like my dad, pissing and moaning, comparing my life to people with more money than me. I hate it. It's meaningless.”

Leaving the mayor's note in slush had been his decision to break away, but he didn't figure that they were done for good. “You want to go clean after all?”

“I don't mind getting up to no good, sometimes,” Kenny clarified, “but I'm not doing it for the money.”

“You've done plenty for money,” Cartman argued.

“For people I care about. It just so happens they always need money.”

Cartman had done a lot just for the sake of money. Had used it to measure his worth and others. Risked his life and others for it. Being greedy was one reason why he was called a fatass. Would he be like that until he died?

“You've gone quiet,” Kenny observed. “Are you re-evaluating your sinful life up til now? Having some kind of discovery about yourself?”

“Fuck off, I'm taking a nap,” Cartman said, closing his eyes defiantly.

The wheels turned round and round, little rocks ricocheted off the fender, and the radio's stream sounded further and further away drifting from one song to the next. The last thing he remembered before falling asleep was Kenny talking to himself, to keep himself awake. What was the last thing he heard him say?

Cartman would think back to that moment in time and wish that he had heard him, to warn him.

The first thing Cartman heard when he woke up was a deafening clap of percussive, reverberating sound and a flash of light outside of the truck. His heart immediately paced into a drumming roll of beats, pumping him full of adrenaline to fight off his fatigue. He'd heard a gunshot. From where?

He was upright in the truck. Kenny wasn't beside him. They were parked outside of Hell's Pass Gas Station with thirty minutes til midnight. He couldn't make out what was going on inside the dusty barred windows obscured by promotional flyers. He found Kenny's loeaded Ruger SR9 in the glovebox, meaning that Kenny hadn't taken it in with him. Someone else had fired a gun. He slid over the seat and flung open the truck's passenger-side door. Parked directly to their right was a metallic-blue SUV. He didn't need to check. License plate _CK-7502._

He hugged the wall and looked around the corner through the lower-half of the glass front doors; identifying two men in combative stances, dressed in jeans, jumpers, and ski masks. Cartman braced himself to shoot. He had ten bullets. He hadn't fired Kenny's ruger before. It was a compact 9 millimeter pistol suited to concealed carrying, and it felt small in Cartman's hands. Even with ten yards or less between them he could miss, and this would get ugly fast.

Putting a bullet through the glass sent the first shot wide, and it brought attention immediately; all he could do was keep shooting until his arm recoiled. A bullet had bit through the underfat of his arm, and blood began steeping into the layers of his coat's sleeve. He changed to his off-hand and hazarded a fast peek. More of a juke than an attempt to see anything. No shots came his way so he ducked down and peeked from the ground. The two men he'd seen were down, their blood was flowing over square, white tiles, getting deep in the grout between.

He slowly opened the door, shards of glass falling free from the frame and shattering into smaller pieces against the ground.

“Kenny!” Cartman shouted into the station, looking around with wild eyes. Looking to the right, he could see over the counter- the clerk was dead on the ground, had been for a few minutes- the blood pool under them had settled and the pallor of death in their shocked face was fully cast as a tragic mask.

A third masked man revealed himself, springing up from hiding under the counter. He exchanged shots with Cartman, aiming center mass, before return fire caught him in the eye and dropped his body backwards.

“Kenny...!”

Cartman repeated faintly, clutching about his side where he'd been freshly bit.

“Eric...Help me out of here. I don't want to die next to a toilet again.”

Cartman stepped over the bodies to the bathroom, hoisting Kenny from the floor, hissing and shouting with the effort of it, feeling the trickle of blood down his leg. Kenny had been shot too. If it hit a lung he probably wouldn't be talking, but he didn't look good. He aimed around at the ceiling for a camera, but it had already been dismantled at range. So there was an exchange happening here, but why did they stick up the station and shoot civilians?

Helping Kenny into the truck, he shakily reached for the phone in his pocket and passed it off. “Call for help.”

“Who would help us?”

“Somebody!” Cartman cried out in exasperation, pained by the defeat he saw, moving to smash and grab from the SUV parked beside them, finding a briefcase left out plainly in the back seat. Next, he took a gas hose, spraying down the station and the SUV before getting in the driver's seat of Kenny's truck. Pulling out onto the road, he rolled down the window, braced his arm on the window, and ran the ruger dry, firing steel-core bullets at the ground. One of them skidded, made a spark, ignited the gas. The truck peeled away with a screech, and an explosion flared in the rear-view window.

Kenny admired it, slumped against Eric, phone against his ear, saying, “Hi Butters, it's me, Kenny. Cartman and I got hurt bad. I guess it was a matter of time, huh? I don't know if we'll make it from here, but we're pulling away from the Hell's Pass station, driving back south. If I die, I guess either this message gets deleted or you forget it ever happened, but Eric and I love you. Bye.”

Cartman winced with a grim attempt at a laugh, “Keep that attitude up and we'll die for real...Give me the phone, I'll call Tweek.”

No answer. Cartman left a message similar to the one Kenny left, minus the ' I love you', adding, “You need to get us to Dr. Mephesto or we're going to die. No hospital.”

Eric hung up and jostled Kenny, who had gone still and quiet. “Kenny...! Why did you stop at that station?”

“I thought I'd fill the tank, for the drive to see Karen, we were running low...Never got to it though. Pretty ironic we got shot by some dickheads rolling over a gas station.”

The tank was was running empty. Driving on an empty tank wasn't so far off from what he was feeling inside.

“Don't fall asleep,” Cartman pleaded, jostling Kenny again, “Or I'll fall asleep. Talk to me.”

“It is shitty that we wouldn't think to call Stan or Kyle, right?”

Cartman teared up, “I told you, I don't want to talk about those assholes! Fuck them! I won't give them another chance to abandon us!”

“I talked big before, but I have pride too. I don't think I could do it.”

The car swerved from left to right. Cartman felt woozy.

“Pull over,” Kenny said.

The truck's speed petered out, stopping on the side of the road, compacting snow beneath it. Barren fields, a black sky devoid of stars, and cold dust falling from the sky- burying what lay beneath.

“If you think you're going to die, just let it happen,” Kenny advised further. “It's traumatic to leave your body. If you resist too much you won't cross over, you could be stuck as a spirit.”

“If you think you're going to die, fight it with everything you've got,” Cartman pleaded. “If your spirit leaves your body, you know I've got room to spare.”

Kenny laughed. “Maybe I've forgotten what it's like, to fear it. I feel so numb to it now.”

“You don't feel the pain?”

“I can feel it, but it's nothing new. I can feel how many breaths I have left, before I stop. How about you?”

“I'm not fucking dying,” Cartman shook his head in disbelief as the images before him trailed, lagged, and blurred. “One of them will come for us,” he asserted, his head lolling down to look at his phone, squinting his eyes at it, straining until he could read the display. “We just lost the signal, that's why they're not calling. They could be on their way right now.”

Eric settled back against his seat, tucking Kenny in under the crook of his bloodied arm.

“How many breaths have you got left?”

“Here, let's count.”

Kenny twisted and lifted his face to kiss Cartman. He was out of breath when their lips peeled apart.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> T h e E n d ?


	11. Chapter 11

Red and blue lights flashed in front of the derelict vehicle buried in the snow, just a few miles south of the smoldering wreckage of a gas station where four people were found dead. An officer responding to the scene stepped out of his truck and walked toward the big, unnatural mound, pacing a circle around it. He knocked his baton on the window and called for anyone inside. He opened the passenger side door to find a black briefcase and two bodies soaked through with blood. As he reached for the briefcase, the body at the bottom of the heap brandished a pistol and aimed it at him.

“Fuck off,” the undead gunman croaked, his arm wavered with the weight of steel, and his eyelids sagged. His other hand held tight onto the briefcase with pudgy clenching fingers, locked into a tug-of-war. With the body of his partner weighing him down, he had no leverage to pull back. He couldn't hold onto the briefcase for long. His arm jerked loosely in its socket and only the desperate grip of his fingers kept him from losing hold. “This is our money,” he growled. “We're going to get away with it this time, no one's going to stop us.” 

The cop put both hands into pulling away the briefcase, so the robber shot him. He'd had such a limp hold on the gun that it jumped like a bull bucking off its rider. The bullet's hot and freshly spent casing fell onto the shooter's upper leg, but he couldn't feel a thing. The hazy man in blue fell back out of sight to leak red over fallen white. From the wound of the contact shot, a smokey wisp of burnt gunpowder rose up toward the sky, as if to signal the man's soul leaving his body. One more for the snow to cover up. 

Eric dropped his gun and ran his trembling fingers through Kenny's hair. The bullet should have woken him up and left his ears ringing, but it sounded so far away. With trepidation, his fingers slowly fell to palpate against the jugular vein of his partner, to feel for a pulse. His fingers were too numb to feel a thing, but he felt an irregular thud against his chest, so he was certain his heart must still be beating inside. For a moment, he thought he really had died; that he'd sucked out the last breath he had for the sake of a parting kiss.“Did I wake you, Ken? Just rest. I'll take care of everything.”

Kenny didn't say anything. He hadn't reacted at all. That irregular thudding from his chest grew more irregular still, faintly but rapidly ticking between bulging, unnatural beats, and it wasn't localized in his chest alone- it moved up and down his stomach, moving independently of his physiology, as if his heart had rattled free and was burrowing for a way out of its cage. The alien thudding and bulging multiplied, kicking for space inside. Despite all the movement Cartman had been capable of before, the panicked rush of commands from his brain became bottle-necked at something out of his control, his body producing only the most sluggish and feeble of writhing, unable to move out from underneath the stirring corpse above him. His voice bled away in fear to a whisper. “Kenny?”

Kenny's body was locked into rigor, hanging as heavy as lead over Cartman's torso. His blood-drained skin looked like porcelain marbled with blue veins. For a moment, as his throat and jaw tensed and extended, it looked like he might speak, but all that escaped from his lips was the hissing and squeaking of swarming rats, covered in viscera, moving out of one body and on to the next. Their little needled feet ran all over Cartman, and they began to carve bite-sized pieces from his flesh with their gnashing teeth.

Cartman bolted awake, taken from the throes of one nightmare only to wake in another. Red and blue lights flashed in front of the derelict truck buried in the snow, filtered like Christmas lights through the dense powder covering the windshield. Gradually he became more aware of the sticky, unmoving body draped across him. He shut his eyes tight, shook his head, weakly pushed the body off of him. He crawled to open the door and tumbled out of the truck, onto the snow; puking out every ounce of goodwill in his body, sucking in cold gasps of air between ragged, indignant cries. He clawed and punched at the icy top-layer of snow beneath him until his knuckles were torn and raw. Even as the cop approached from his truck, Cartman couldn't stand up all the way, bowed over, stumbling, digging fruitlessly in his pockets for his gun.

“It's a good thing I found you before anyone else did, or you'd really be in trouble,” Officer Barbrady offered consolation, tugging his hat down closer to his ears, covering the split, graying fringes of hair on the back of his head. None of the compassion he had in his eyes translated through the mirror shades he wore; only the harsh glare of the sun reflected off the rocky mountains. It made his job easier, not letting people know that he had a heart. Give people an inch and they'll take a mile. That's been his experience on the force.

The serendipity of it all was lost on Cartman- he was still wondering if he shouldn't try to find his gun as Barbrady crossed the distance from his truck to theirs, looking inside to find Kenny sprawled across the seat in pools of blood. They shared a moment of silence before the officer's investigation continued., becoming as invasive as reaching inside the vehicle for the black briefcase on the seat. “Fuck off,” Cartman croaked at him, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, woozy and delirious from dehydration. Barbrady paid him no mind, unclasping the briefcase, and Cartman rushed into his side, shouting hoarsely, “I said fuck off! That's ours!”

A shrink-wrapped pound of heroin, padded to the side of the case with green stacks. Barbrady was satisfied with just a peek, shoving Cartman back. “Your cut is ten thousand, and you'll get it just as soon as we check in with the mayor.” His eyes fell on Kenny. He felt like this had been his failing. He had known Kenny would likely become a criminal from a very young age because of his home life, but there was nothing he could do. He could lock up Stuart or Carol after one of their spats, but that was a day out of both their paychecks. He could take the kids to the pancake house to fatten and cheer them up after a fight, but once the kids were over twelve they were no longer eligible for the free kids' meal, and he couldn't afford it while paying for his wife's hospital bills. He could pin them with plastic deputy badges, drive them to their friends' houses for the night, let them off the hook for petty crimes, and pray for them every Sunday- but he knew one of those kids was going to end up dead, lying stiff on the wrong side of the law because their parents were asleep at the wheel, slaves to the abuse of illegal substances, and not even three beautiful kids was reason enough to break the habit. He would have done anything for them, if they were his. He and his wife had always wanted kids.

There was another reason he wore the mirror shades- besides hiding his weakness, he also thought someone might see into the dark behind his eyes. The bad cop in the back of his head, telling him that he could have prevented this by letting any one of Stuart's or Carol's fights or overdoses run its course, so that the kids would have another chance under someone else's care. He didn't listen to the bad cop inside of him, but he did listen to the Mayor, so he threw the briefcase back into the truck and shut the door, paying the body inside no further mind.

“He's dead,” Cartman mumbled. He was already halfway hand-cuffed before he realized it, too late to get out of them. A firm hand on his shoulder guided him to the tow truck, but once he realized that he was to sit in the backseat reserved for recent arrests, he jumped and struggled in the lawman's grasp like a fish on the line, dangling out of the water over a bucket of ice. He detested handcuffs and the mesh screen of the back of police cars, bearing a likeness to the confessionals in church he was so quick to profane.

“Get in the back of the truck quietly now,” Barbrady said sternly, stuffing Eric into the backseat of the tow against his will. Why couldn't it have been him that died instead of Kenny? They were born to similar circumstances, but for all the grace and humility Kenny had showed growing up, Eric had shown an equal measure of indignation and conceit, and the records of his acts of vengeance far outweighed the inequity he'd been dealt in life. Using South Park's isolation to his advantage, he'd committed numerous atrocious crimes, knowing that the Mayor would cover it up to keep her own dealings secret. As the saying goes, it takes a village, and they had raised a monster that fed itself on tears and outrage. Released into the wild, without someone like Kenny to temper him, what would he do?

Cartman looked out the rear window. Snow was still covering the windshield of the truck towed behind them, and he couldn't see Kenny through it, but he didn't look away. With intense concentration, he visualized the person he loved most lying cold and dead. Where others naturally first settle into shock and disbelief for the death of a loved one, he looked on, unflinching. He believed that this was a key component to his awareness of Kenny's resurrections, and if he didn't bear witness to it, who would? It was his responsibility; to remember Kenny's deaths when no one else did, to welcome him back and let him know that he was missed. How long would it be this time? Very rarely did it take less than a week, sometimes taking up to a year or more, and that was just to his own mortal perception of time; on the planes of heaven and hell, time had no meaning. 

Barbrady spoke over the horn, “Mayor, I've got them. The cops chalking out the area hadn't found them yet. They got the stuff, but they're shot up. The Mccormick kid is dead. Where should I take him?”

“Damn,” the mayor sighed with a crackle over the speaker on the dash. “Just bring them here.”

Word spread fast and easy in a small town like South Park, but it was still early in the morning. The circumstances would be hush-hush, but someone was bound to tell someone else they saw Kenny's beaten pick-up getting towed back into town, with Eric Cartman sitting in the back of the police truck towing it. The two of them couldn't make it one day out there- and where was Kenny? Tweek and Butters hadn't gotten the voice-mails sent to them the night before, so they never knew of the trouble that had befallen their friends; a curious trick of the curse that covered its tracks and made people forget poor Kenny had died at all. 

Pulling up in the alley behind Town Hall, out of the public eye, Barbrady pulled a bodybag from the bed of the tow to take to the rusty pickup nearby. As he opened the door, he found it empty. It felt like he was standing in front of the fridge at home, and he had forgotten what he had wanted from it in the first place. Try as he might, he couldn't remember why he had opened up the pick-up, or why he was holding a bodybag. He stashed it back in the tow, and let Cartman out to bring him up to the mayor.

The first order of business was giving the Mayor her due, the contents of the briefcase. A shrink-wrapped brick of heroin and stacks of green. Not satisfied with a mere peek like Barbrady had been, she pulled up a stack to riffle through, only to find that, under the top layer of green, there were mismatched swatches of pink and flesh tones. Underneath the money, the briefcase was full of cut-up porn magazines.

The Mayor set the briefcase down on her desk with an ominous metallic thud and asked, with all the candor of a caged animal presented an empty plate for dinner, “What the fuck is this?”

“I don't know,” Cartman answered dumbly.

The Mayor signaled for Barbrady to hit Eric. Barbrady didn't want to, but she wouldn't ask again; she'd do it herself, and probably hurt the boy worse, so he mumbled an apology before whipping the weighted butt of his gun at the back of Eric's head. Eric swore at the suddenness of it, crumpled to his knees, reached to touch the point of impact and felt warm dampness on the tips of his fingers.

McDaniels meaningfully clipped the end of a half-smoked cigar with a tool on her desk that looked like a hand-held guillotine, to hint toward future threats of dire pain, lighting up to blow acrid smoke at the wounded thing kneeling before her. She held the power she did because she never let anyone take advantage of her, and she had the money she did because she never let any of it slip through her fingers. If Eric was more mindful of her, perhaps he could have made something of himself. She possessed all that he aspired to, and yet he always rebelled. She'd let it slide before, but now he'd gone too far; he needed to be taught a lesson, and return what was hers while he was at it. “Where is the rest of my money?”

“I don't know!” Cartman cried in frustration, his eyes filmed over with tears that earned him more ire than sympathy. That's just what he would say, that he didn't know, but he well and truly had no idea where it had gone. 

“I figure his partner took it,” Barbrady reasoned, trying to keep Eric from being struck again, guiltily glancing down at the trickle of blood falling down the rolls of flesh on the back of the boy's neck, busying his hands by taking a handkerchief to the butt of his gun.

For all the things people said about Kenny Mccormick, McDaniels had thought better of him. Taking the money and leaving his partner on the hook seemed more like something Cartman would do. She couldn't be sure whether or not Eric was in on it. “Where is he?”

“I don't know...” Cartman shook his head. “I thought he was dead. I thought we both were. He's gone.” His mind couldn't handle the idea of Kenny ever betraying him, not like this, not for money. The thought alone hurt more than getting pistol-whipped had.

Barbrady tried to fill in the gaps of the story, but he experienced some uneasy feeling trying to recount how he had found Cartman. The memory of it felt ancient somehow. He knew that the two of them had left town together, and not reached their destination, so Kenny should have been in the truck when he found them...But he wasn't. At least, that's how he remembered it. “We know they left together, and didn't reach their destination, so they must have both been in the truck...But...” Barbrady winced under sudden mental duress. “But it was just Eric.”

“So, Kenny took the money and ran,” McDaniels returned to her desk to shake off the ash at the end of her cigar with a tap of her index finger, her teal-painted nails catching a glint of sunlight through the window, looking like extended claws.

The misalignment of facts in the matter didn't sit right with Barbrady's modest detective skills. “You would think...But he'd have left a trail of blood in the snow, and even if he did leave without a trace, he'd have died out there in the cold, the gas station was the closest building for miles.”

McDaniels, as she often did, cut down Barbrady's reasoning with her own, underpinning the reason why crime ran the law in South Park. “So, he could have hid somewhere in the truck until it was towed back to town, and you were too stupid to notice.” 

Barbrady fell silent and felt small. He'd indebted himself to this woman to help pay for his wife's treatments, but it had all been in vain. He'd lost a lot of fight in him after she died, a lot of hope, and he'd let the Mayor hold his strings since then, to do with as she pleased. 

McDaniels shut the blinds on the window to cast their dealings in shade and sat down in her brown leather office chair before she directed her fury at Cartman. It was bad enough that they had botched what should have been a milk run, one or possibly both of them had got it in their heads to skip town with her cut. “You're going to make up what you owe to me.”

The grief that Cartman had been avoiding started to settle in. He wasn't supposed to be here; knelt down and bleeding from the back of his head; he was supposed to be in his new apartment, surprising Kenny in bed with a pitcher of bloody mary and a plate of biscuits covered in sausage gravy. He felt sick and woozy and alone, asking her in half-disbelief, “forty grand?” 

She clarified, “the forty grand you owe me, plus compound interest for every day that Kenny Mccormick stays missing.”

“What if he doesn't come back?”

McDaniels didn't like the look on Cartman's face. Something he knew but wouldn't say, something he couldn't hide his guilt for but wouldn't confess to. He hadn't learned his lesson yet. “You're right, that wouldn't be fair. Forget the interest, we'll make it a lump sum. Let's see...” She leaned back in her seat, letting a bouquet of smoke roll in her mouth before blowing it up at the ceiling. From Mexico to Japan, she had the reputation of a Dragon, lording over sheep, lurking in the shadow of snow-capped mountains. She guarded this reputation as closely as her hoard of gold, and any infringement upon either demanded retribution, handing down her sentence with a fanged smile. “Four-hundred thousand dollars.” 

The blood drying on the back of Cartman's neck had gone cold, and he thought he might pass out there on the floor. He'd never earned money like that, and there was no one to help him do it now. “Where am I supposed to get that kind of money?”

The Mayor shrugged, pouring herself a shot of the single-malt she'd opened the night before to celebrate Cartman leaving in the first place. “Not in South Park. You're not supposed to be here at all, remember?”

Cartman couldn't mentally afford the thought of Wendy offering him an out the night he'd left, or what she might do if she knew he was here, no matter the reason. He tried to bargain with the Mayor so that he could be on his way. “I'll go. I just need the keys to the truck.”

She shook her head, leaving a stamp of lipstick on her glass. “Your partner's junker is being impounded, and it's going to be torn apart to make sure that you're not hiding anything in it.” 

The truck had all of their things inside of it, packed for a new life together. All their boxes of personal items would be gutted and pilfered through by strangers or worse. All that he had left in the world now were the bloody clothes on his back. For now he had to accept it, so that at least he could get away from her, before she opted to start selling his body-parts to cover his debt instead. “My pay...Can I get that at least?”

The Mayor picked through the briefcase, removing the top-bill from each of the otherwise fraudulent stacks, adding up to a meager twelve-hundred dollars. She passed it to Barbrady, who passed it to Cartman. Before they let him go, they strapped a slim bracelet with a GPS monitor on it to Cartman's wrist. With that, he was duly dismissed. Her expectation was not that he would succeed, but instead that he would fail, and suffer greatly in the attempt. “You've got one month,” she told him. “Now get the fuck out of my town.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to Eric Cartman Is A Fuckin' Fatass And He Always Will Be: Season 2!


	12. Chapter 12

_Kenny, are you listening? It's me, Cartman. I'm kind of royally fucked right now, and usually I depend on you to see me through a royal fucking, but you're dead. I mean, you better be dead, because if you're not I'm going to kill you. I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. I'm just a little spiteful right now, doing the old walk-of-shame out of town. I don't intend to point fingers about who's responsible for this mess, I'm just going to mop it up, all four-hundred thousand dollars of it. Until you get back, I'll have to try to find some new company to work with. To that end, I'm walking instead of going by cab or bus, because I've got a theory that someone will pick me up-- and wouldn't you know it- there's Wendy Testaburger in her silver tesla, pulling to the shoulder of the road just ahead of me. It's not like her to say 'I told you so', so what this says to me is she's got nothing better to do today. Let's see what kind of mileage I can get out of that._

Wendy looked at Cartman through the rear-view mirror. He was wearing the same clothes she'd seen on him the night before at the banquet, though it was hard to tell after becoming so saturated with blood. She preemptively spread a towel over the passenger seat and leaned across the aisle to open the door for him- the car noticeably dipping to the right as he sat down. The whisper of the electric engine carried them away.

“I told you so,” Wendy said.

“That's not like you,” Cartman frowned, eyeing an unopened bottle of water in a holder on the car's mid-console.

“You're going to ask me for something,” Wendy divined, following his line of sight, “and not just for that water. Go on, drink it.”

“Always the humanitarian,” Cartman admired before asking, “how about a ride to Denver?” His request seemed like a safe bet. Wendy was dressed business-formal, and her personal effects in the car hinted at 'day-trip'.

“And spend all that time driving, with you?” Wendy rolled the passenger-side window down and began to drive despite protesting, spraying her side of the car with floral perfume. “You reek. I can't help but think that even if I do drive you all that way, you'll ask for more.”

After gulping down the entirety of the water bottle's contents, Cartman let out a ragged gasp for air and wiped a stray rivulet trickling down his chin with the back of his wrist, squinting against the sun flaring on him through the windshield. “I won't ask for more, not without something to offer you.”

Wearing Token's pair of gold-rimmed Ray-Bans, Wendy blocked the light of the sun from coming in, and blocked the glint of amusement in her eyes from coming out.“What could you possibly offer me?”

“A little excitement.”

“You call _that_ a little excitement?” Wendy scoffed. She was not interested in shoot-outs, crossing crime lords, or in being arrested by the police. She had misunderstood Cartman the night before. He wanted money, sure, but he also wanted to defy death and fortune itself. Somehow, as bad as things had gotten for him, he looked ready for more.

“What happened last night was a nasty surprise. Believe it or not, I didn't take that job- I wound up at the site by sheer coincidence, and once I was there it was them or me, and I took what they had because if I do a job, I may as well get paid for it. That was the setup. I go with Barbrady to make the delivery, and the joke's on me because the money is gone. Funny, isn't it? I do the job, and now I'm paying for it ten times over.”

“I don't believe it,” Wendy mumbled, changing lanes on the highway to overtake a truck minding the speed limit. She was at least intrigued by what she was hearing- it made for better listening than the usual public broadcast, recanting issues she was already knowledgeable of. As long as Cartman was willing to tell-all and mind his manners, she would let him hitch a ride. “Did Kenny know?”

Cartman paused as the car whizzed past the blackened husk of the gas station he'd blown up. He saw in his mind's eye the bewildered death mask of the gas station attendant. Young face, worked the night shift, maybe because he was shy. Maybe he went to school in Fairview. Maybe he used to go to that gas station when he was young, too. Like Cartman and his friends, stopping there on every trip out of town. The cherry-cola slush machine, the trucker hats, the nudie mags, the yellowed plastic display cases, and the blue-white checker-patterned floor meeting the wood-panel walls- all of that was gone. That was what gave him pause. “I'm not sure anymore. Maybe he did.”

“Where is he?” Wendy asked. When Cartman didn't reply she asked further, “is he dead?”

“If he was, there'd be a body. Right?” Cartman alone knew better, and when it suited him he could use that knowledge to his advantage. He'd prefer people thinking that Kenny was merely missing- they might blame him otherwise, and no one would give him the time of day for being responsible for that.

Wendy tried to find the answer that had been eluding them all. “Did he take the money?”

That was a possibility Cartman had shut himself off to.. “He wouldn't have rolled me over for one year of minimum wage in a briefcase.”

Passing from the range of one tower to another, the radio flickered between classical music and eighties pop. Wendy turned it off. “What about the Mayor, do you think she set you up?”

“She was furious at me. Genuinely furious, because she thinks I ripped her off. I don't think she set me up.” Cartman pointed out a detour to a Starbucks's drive-thru with a mind for some coffee and snacks, but Wendy wouldn't have it, not in her car. He'd have to wait.

“Who else could have done it?”

Cartman felt some glimmer of suspicion toward Wendy, but it was merely an old reflex- if she intended to bury him, she'd have done it herself. The list of suspects got smaller and smaller as he mentally pruned the logical dead-ends. “Barbrady wouldn't have done it, that would mean going against the Mayor. It could have been the buyer or the seller at the meet.”

“Do you have any information on them?”

It was clear to Cartman that Wendy's interest in the case amounted to passing amusement- he couldn't rely on her help, not yet, but he wouldn't withhold information either- that was the price of the ride to Denver. “I have a license plate number, I'll see where that leads.”

“It's going to lead to gangland,” Wendy warned, “and no one is going to help you fight that war.”

“Never stopped me before,” Cartman grinned, his voice dipping an octave with a trademark dramatic flair, “someone's got to clean up the trash out there.”

Wendy recognized at once that Cartman was speaking as the Coon. His recent activity had gone unnoticed, but what he was talking about now was high profile, big city- no support from the cops or local government for a vigilante. “You can't hide behind the mask anymore. If you put it back on, someone else with a mask is going to come for you.”

That suited Cartman just fine. If Kenny was still out there, that was just the way to summon him into a confrontation- Coon vs. Mysterion. “I'd like to see who comes for me.”

Wendy sighed, “don't drag us all out of retirement just to settle your own vendetta.”

“I'm not dragging anyone into anything. It's just a friendly invitation.”

A friendly invitation from Eric Cartman could mean anything from a birthday party with carnival rides to a chili cook-off where he feeds you your own parents. Wendy didn't respond. Their ride together was nearing its end, the scenery passing from familiar, snowy desolation to dense, concrete bustle. Wendy was headed for one of those big, imposing corporate towers, and Cartman was headed for his tiny, unfurnished apartment. On the way, he tried catching Wendy's attention one last time. “You know jewels and paintings are always in with the criminal underworld. Each hideout I hit connected to these guys is going to leave a lot of goods. It'd be a shame to leave it all to police inventory, don't you think?”

Wendy didn't like where this was going. She was out of her rebellious teen phase, as all the capes and mask-wearers of South Park should have been by now...But the offer was not lacking completely in appeal. “I told Token I'm done being a cat burglar.”

“And you haven't been entirely honest with him, have you?” Cartman was not certain of this, it was something of a gamble, but it paid off in Wendy's stunned silence. For all her protests to Cartman's plans, she had been up to some mischief herself. She parked by a street corner half a mile away from Cartman's apartment and waited expectantly for him to get out before she had to tell him to, tensely gripping the wheel and squaring her jaw. Cartman got out and watched Wendy's face as she drove away with abrupt acceleration.

_Did you see that, Kenny? The look of moral complication of her face? I've still got it. She won't join me yet, she's too prideful, but I've planted a seed that's taken root. Give it some time and that urge will grow. If I can align myself with her, the money will come much easier. The tricky part will be making good on my boasting for once. Whether or not Wendy chooses to ally herself with me again, I'll have to find a way to get Butters and Tweek back into the fold as well. I'm sure that you would not approve, but if I'm being punished for not being completely honest enough with my partner, then they should be suffering right alongside me. And don't forget, if they had just picked up their phones last night and helped us when we needed it, I wouldn't be in this mess._

Cartman was stopped several times in the street by people mistaking him for being homeless, offering him handouts, and he readily accepted it- five dollars-odd with change, a red paperboard matchbook with the number for a homeless shelter, and half an Italian Subway sandwich for him to eat as he walked. “Stupid assholes,” he mumbled to himself between mouthfuls. All the moxy that he mustered up in front of Wendy to look better off than he was dissipated as he finished the walk to his apartment building. He stared up at it, but moved no closer to it than from the street outside. He focused on the rightmost window on the third floor, his apartment, with white blinds drawn closed behind a copper-colored window frame. It felt lonely and ominous. There was nothing inside waiting for him. He recalled hearing that if you want to assure death when jumping off a building, you want to be at least four stories up. Had he heard that from Kenny or Butters? He couldn't remember. He'd been on the ledge himself once. He remembered Kyle telling him to jump.

Just as the pain in his chest started to lump up in his throat, an old, white-haired woman in a tracksuit walking with a black cat on a leash called out to him, but he'd only registered the sound and not the message. “Say again?,” he asked her.

“Do you have a light, young man?”

He was grateful to have someone ask for something rather than offer him charity. He reached for the matchbook he'd been given before, taking note of the woman's brand. Marlboro. Kenny's brand. Sure, it was the most popular brand in the world, but it suited him. Before he struck a match he asked, “can I have one?”

“Surely,” the old woman nodded, spotted hands trembling, shaking a second stick from the pack. “You know, I'm trying to quit. I picked it back up after my husband died, and no one has been telling me to quit since, but I ought to.”

“You're doing a bad job,” Cartman told her bluntly, leaving her in a moment of shock before telling her, “you should quit.”

She drew back her thin lips, pulled taut to her droopy, freckled cheeks. She looked at the pack, hemming and hawing for some excuse.

“I could take them off your hands,” Cartman offered.

She pushed the cigarettes back into the pack and relinquished it to him before continuing her walk with her cat.

The loaded pack felt heavier than its packaging ought to. Cartman drew a cigarette out and smelled it, shoulders pitching high and falling low with a terrible, forlorn sigh. He'd never felt the urge to smoke so acutely before, as if it would carry his problems away in a puff of smoke, and trick at least one of his senses into thinking that Kenny was still with him. He lit up and continued walking, away from the apartment. The sooner he could confirm whether Kenny was dead or not, the better. What would he use? A ouija board? He chuckled to himself, balancing the cigarette between his lips to stuff his hands into his pockets, marching on aimlessly into downtown Denver.

Cartman's phone buzzed in his pocket. In the process of going through his things, the Mayor had arranged for a bug that would alert them to future incoming and outgoing calls. Cartman fished the phone from his pocket and made a mental note to pick up a burner, something disposable for the sake of privacy. The display warned him that the caller was Kenny's Dad. A call he should be dreading, from a father desperate to know if his son was dead or alive, but he'd find a way to make it suit his purposes.

Butters thought of himself as a patient person. He had to be. Waiting for his parents to admit they hate each other, waiting for his rotten grandmother to die, waiting to live independently. These things had not yet come to pass and he was growing impatient. Similarly, Butters thought he could be patient with Bradley, because it was so flattering to know someone had a crush on him. He had been waiting for Bradley to be honest with his family, and until last night he had also been waiting for Bradley to ask to go all the way. Like so many things in his life, Butters had waited and it did not pay off.

It wasn't Bradley's fault. It was natural to be nervous in a situation like that. His real mistake was letting the expectation of it become so built up, into some elaborate ritual that started at a fancy restaurant and ended in a honeymoon suite. Butters appreciated playing Pretty Woman for a bit, but he was not a lady of pretension. He liked dancing, ponies, and getting pounded. He had not realized until that night how differently their interests aligned. Bradley thought that certain kinds of sex were immoral, degenerate even, and had tried to make some kind of tender, lights-off and under-covers missionary love. It made for a nice image, something you could tastefully render for the cover of a romance novel- but the problem was, Butters first saw sex in the context of the infamously hardcore pornographic motion picture “Backdoor Sluts 9” (seeing his father wrestling in the White Swallow bath house did not count when he kept the memory repressed well enough).

So Butters had been sweating under the covers in the dark, holding his knees up to his chest, trying to help Bradley slip inside of him before he went limp into another condom he'd have to change for a fresh one, and twenty minutes later, after less than three minutes of sustained penetration, Bradley was finished, hoping to have pillow talk and cuddle. Up to and including leaving his partner unsatisfied, Bradley had made very amateurish hetero-like sex to a very daring and experienced gay. Maybe Bradley would get better, but Butters was feeling all-around out of patience, and if they had sex like that again he would not be able to fake enjoying it a second time.

“Hey, what's on your mind?” Bradley asked. They had been going through a Starbucks drive-thru on the way back to South Park when he noticed that Butters was a bit distant. He assumed it was about last night. Bradley had completely discounted the advice Cartman had given him, because it didn't seem like Cartman knew anything about Butters, or about making love. It made him nervous to think that Cartman knew what he was talking about, especially when it came to his boyfriend.

If he couldn't be patient, Butters figured he could at least be honest. “You didn't need to go to all that trouble getting' a hotel room and stuff. There was a lot of pressure to make it seem 'worth it'.”

“Yeah, you're right,” Bradley cringed a bit, chewing on the green straw of his mocha frap. “It was something to cross off my bucket list, at least. I'm glad I did it. Especially with you.”

“Aw, shucks,” Butter genuinely blushed and reached to hold Bradley's hand. He felt like an asshole for all the hot talk he'd let pitch about in his brain. “I'm glad I could help you cross the Rubicon. What do you think of sex now?”

“Honestly, now that I know better, it's not very important. I don't really care if I do it again or not. I'm just as happy being able to share a bed with you.”

Butters leaned and kissed Bradley on the cheek. It was a relief to talk that out, and not letting it stew any longer. He'd be fine not having sex often either if Bradley was happy, because that's what he wanted. Butters felt confident that their relationship could stand just about anything.

The next obstacle to their happiness came further than expected- rounding the corner to the street Butters lived on, they found something of a scene in progress at the Stotch home. Linda was crying inside the house, Stephen was arms akimbo with his tie askew out on the lawn, and Stuart Mccormick was being driven away in the back of Officer Barbrady's squad car.

“Leopold!” Stephen shouted.

“Oh, boy.” Butters slumped in his seat. “Bradley, you don't have to stay for this.”

To his dismay, Bradley insisted he stay to support Butters, present for his father's tirade.

“Stuart McCormick was just here, raving like a lunatic about a massacre at a gas station- he says that you've been helping his friend Eric Cartman steal things, that you boys are responsible for his missing boy, and to top it all off- you've been skulking around at night, entertaining a homosexual relationship!” Stephen became more aware of Bradley standing there in shock, staring at him. “Oh, Bradley, how do you? I'm sorry you had to hear all of this, I'm sure it must come as a great shock that your Brother in Christ is living such a sinful secret life!”

Butters exploded, shouting and raising his arms up above his head,“Bradley is my boyfriend, Dad!”

Stephen looked at Bradley as if he'd suddenly mutated into a pustulous alien, snapping back to Butters to demand an explanation. “What about your girlfriend in Canada, Butters? The one you're always on the phone with...Do you mean to tell me you've been fibbing about her?”

“Of course it's a fib, Dad! Every other closet gay in the country has a long-distance Canadian girlfriend! Geez!”

“You free-loading little turd, you want to raise your voice to me? You want to blatantly disobey me and bring sin into my home? It's over!” Stephen shoved his son away from him. “You are grounded, grounded from living here! Forever!”

Butters cried, “I hope Mom cuts your dick off, you hypocrite! You nasty, old fucker!”

“Get off my lawn!”

“Fuck your lawn, Dad!” Butters kicked a nasty divot into the grass, tearing it up to expose the soil beneath, marching back to Bradley's car to make a speedy getaway from his screaming, red-faced banshee of a father. He'd left everything he owned in his childhood home, and it was sure to wind up in the trash or a burn pile the same day.

Bradley didn't know where to drive to, so he pulled over near the sign for Stark's Pond, away from the prying eyes of the suburbs, hoping to get his own explanation. He had been shocked alright, but not by what Stephen had expected. “Butters, what happened to Kenny?”

Butters wiped the tears from his ears, gritting his teeth angrily for shedding them in the first place. “I don't know!”

“What he said, about a gas station- have he and Cartman _killed_ people?”

Butters wouldn't say.

“Have _you_?”

Butters pleaded through a fresh bout of tears,“it was an accident, Bradley, honest...”

“Please, stop, this is too much. I can't...” Bradley looked around aimlessly, unable to draw his eyes back toward the person he thought he knew so well. He didn't know what to do. Butters had just been excommunicated by his father. Maybe Butters was ready to leave home, but Bradley wasn't, not with the person sitting beside him, so unlike the boy he met at camp. “I need some time.”

Butters let himself out of the car, watching the still water of the nearby pond. He knew that this was one of Stan Marsh's favorite crying spots, and he hoped he wouldn't mind someone else using it. He told Stan once that he was glad for the times he was sad, to be capable of it, to feel human. To feel so sad was only possible because he had been so happy before. A beautiful sadness. He didn't feel that. He felt a very ugly sadness instead.

 


	13. Chapter 13

All throughout the course of the business meeting in Denver, Wendy was disturbed with thoughts of Cartman. She stared into space, fiddled with the mechanism of a company pen, and needed any questions directed at her to be repeated, while other lines of conversation filtered through one ear and out the next.

It should be no surprise to her that Cartman was still acting without regard to how his actions impacted others, but he seemed oblivious even to the harm he did to himself. Returning as the Coon would only put him more in harm's way. Further disturbing her was Cartman's intuition that she had not truly given up her own Super identity. The lure of the mask was powerful. The identities she and the others crafted for themselves had threatened to take over. They all agreed it was for the greater good that they retire. The heroes continued to right wrongs as their mundane selves, and the villains continued to commit wrongs as their mundane selves. If one of them came back, what would the rest do?

In the slower parts of her life, such as business meetings, of which she had to go to many lately; Wendy would look at the positions of the security cameras, the number of staff, and the model of the locks, and think to herself how easy it would be. But Wendy was more careful than that. She hadn't outright stolen anything by hand in a long time.

Coming alone from the high-rise meeting to the underground parking garage via elevator, Wendy's agitated walk to her car made a thunderous clashing of high-heels on concrete that echoed to the furthest walls. Just as soon as she had sealed herself in the isolation of her car, her cellphone rang, and as she opened her purse to find it, a bundle of company pens she had stolen from the meeting pointed up at her accusingly.

Company pens are expected to be stolen, aren't they? These expenses are paid for, maybe even paid back after writing them off somehow. The pens also had branding- taking the pen was spreading awareness of the brand. The utility of the pen that you enjoy is paid in kind by the subtle advertising you put upon yourself and any potential borrowers of the pen. If pens weren't routinely stolen from every place of business by workers and customers, the business would do, statistically speaking, a significant figure of less business, and the pens wouldn't go anywhere. Once the pens accumulated to an excess surplus, the company stops buying custom pens, the custom pen maker gets less business- so on and so forth- ultimately, Wendy taking a pen from a business meeting without telling anyone is not a villainous crime but instead a heroic deed. Never mind that she took nearly all of them.

When did her purse get so messy? It looked more like Bebe's than her own, and for all the shit Wendy gave Bebe about the state of her purse, it was a personal failing to not lead by example. Upending her purse over the passenger seat, she found her phone, and organized her purse as she talked into the receiver. “Kyle. How are you?”

“I'm a little frustrated with Stan right now,” Kyle huffed, dipping french fries into a strawberry milkshake at the Denver International Airport's McDonald's. “He heard about Kenny going missing and he went into hysterics- he thinks I'm being insensitive about it, he's refusing to fly back to LA with me, so now we're stranded.” Kyle scoffed, gesturing with his hands still pinching fries and shake as if Wendy was there to see it. “Wasn't Kenny always a truant at school, missing all the time? I don't like that Stan wants to get involved in this because of their history, but everything I say contrary to him right now is making me the bad guy, somehow!”

Wendy rolled her eyes and started her car for the drive to the airport. “You can stay with us Kyle, it's fine.”

“I'm not worried about where we're going to stay-” Kyle withdrew a bit, looking around to see if Stan had gotten back from the bathroom before continuing. “Kenny going missing has to be part of some scheme of Cartman's, right?”

“I don't think so.”

Kyle didn't like her assured tone. “What aren't you telling me?” 

The imminent return of the Coon, for one. “I shouldn't be on the phone while driving. We can talk about this later if you like, but really I'm just as in the dark as you are. I've heard out your frustrations, now go be nice to Stan.”

Kyle lit up with indignation and grunted,“You don't need to tell me to be nice to Stan! I'm always nice to Stan! I just, hadn't eaten for a while, and I know we won't be getting any refund on those tickets, so I got snippy. I'm fine now.”

“I'll see you soon, Kyle.” 

Paranoia got the best of Wendy, driving her to stop at a carwash before going to the airport, paying for an attendant to wipe down and vacuum the interior. She could not afford Kyle noticing any trace of Cartman in her car. His rank of death, his spots of blood, his malignant aura- whatever Cartman touched inevitably spoiled, and those he touched were marked with his corruption. 

For the things he had done, and what he still planned to do, those affiliated with him would be called to answer as his accomplices. With Kenny missing and Cartman exiled, Butters and Tweek would have to answer for their crimes, but only after the charge came delivered by a drunken redneck screaming just outside their doors. 

Stuart had passed on to the Stotch house after no one answered at the Tweek residence, but the accusation lingered, and Tweek's answer shocked Craig to his core, slipping through lowered defenses and opening old wounds. 

“What do you mean, it's true?” Craig cried.

Tweek admitted it again, staying with the truth even as it scalded him inside. He clutched his fingers fruitlessly at his knees to keep them from shaking, sat before the coffee table in his home.“I've helped Kenny and Cartman do bad things.”

“Why?” Craig uttered in reflex. Part of him didn't want to know any of it. It would have been easier that way. 

“I owed them.” Tweek felt an acute awareness of all the things he'd kept from Craig. The space under the house where the drugs had been stored, the rolls of unmarked bills and the gun in his footlocker, the cling of Kenny's scent on a pillow he'd stuffed into the bottom of the hall closet. His anxiety roared under the premise that Craig knew all of this already, and was just getting him to say it again before handing him over to the police.

“For what?” Craig asked. It was a bitter thought, that those two had brought he and Tweek together again, and just as abruptly might tear them apart.

“They helped me too.” The nature of their help was not in doubt, it was in their reputation alone; Craig didn't need to see Tweek's guilty expression to know that, but he kept pressing still.

“What did you do?” the disappointment was clear in the tenor of his voice, dispassionately asked as it was.

“I sold drugs,” Tweek said quietly.

“You said you wanted to change!” Craig knew that Tweek had done as much in the past. Recreational stuff from a supplier he never disclosed. But he was supposed to have quit. 

Tweek mustered what defense he could, bringing his line of sight back up from staring into the ring-shaped stain of coffee on the table Craig left not using a coaster that morning. “I was forced to!”

“For what? Money?” Craig folded his arms, closing himself off from Tweek's appeals.

Tweek bit at the inside of his cheek and raked his nails over his thighs, rocking in his seat. He wasn't supposed to say. “For my dad.”

That had been ingrained in him from a young age. To lie and steal and deal drugs for his father. He obeyed him for one simple reason. Fear. Tweek's father kept him in line with drugs, with a gun to his head, with a grim reminder that if he stopped doing what he was told he'd go “missing” and be buried in the same plot as Kenny McCormick. “I just had to do one last job and he said he'd leave me alone, then we could be together!”

“What if it didn't work?” Craig asked, and then scoffed when Tweek had no answer. “What if, after you had just gotten back into my life and made me think about...Loving you again, you had gotten killed?What if your dad changed his mind and made you do something else after that?”

Tweek didn't have an answer for any of it. It was just as well, because at that time there came a knock at the door. Butters Stotch called for Tweek from the other side. Butters was greeted at the door by Craig, his face bearing the expression of a mannequin, disquieting in it's frozen hollowness.

Butters kneaded his knuckles together, eyes bloodshot and head bowed.“Did I come at a bad time?” 

Craig pushed his way past Butters. “No, I'm just leaving.” Tweek called for Craig, and Craig flipped him the bird over his shoulder.

Tweek stared after Craig like a forgotten man on an uncharted island watching a rescue ship pass him by without stopping.

Butters murmured, “I'm sorry.”

“It's not your fault,” Tweek reassured him.

Butters couldn't help but think that it was his fault. If he hadn't left the gang Tweek wouldn't have been recruited. “We need to find Kenny if he's still alive.”

Tweek's shoulders pitched and fell with a shrug and a sigh. There was nothing else to do. “Yeah, let's go.” Slumping over and into his car, they made for Denver, to join Cartman in his search.

Still wandering downtown, Cartman had scoffed at the idea of getting a ouija board before, but really it was the only idea he'd had to confirm whether Kenny was alive or dead. He tried shop after shop before encountering a very gothic-looking bookstore. 

From behind the front counter, Henrietta dismissed Cartman right away, speaking between chews of nicotine gum, “no copies of Mein Kampf here, sorry.”

Hearing Henrietta getting annoyed at a customer, Michael tapped over the ugly brown tile floor, moving between the jumbled cases of books and morbid knick-knacks to the register with his cane, using it to keep balance as his back hunched over and his legs bowed wide apart with each step. He could climb stairs with a rail, but inclines were otherwise difficult to maneuver, and he couldn't really run. He was the gangliest person Cartman had ever met- very tall and very thin with decreased muscle tone. He had a hawkish, bony face purposefully accentuated with shadowy makeup, almond eyes, and curly black hair styled something like Roland Orzabal of Tears for Fears, circa Songs From The Big Chair. His size and stature was of stark contrast to Henrietta, who was shorter by two heads or more, and about as festively plump as Cartman, albeit with larger breasts. She and Michael were both still dressing like femme goths.

“What are you doing here?” Michael asked, his voice a nasal, low-pitched monotone. 

“He's here to fuck with us, obviously,” Henrietta pshawed, her voice similarly affected, but some of her speech patterns betrayed her roots as a girl from the California Valley.

“I am completely, seriously asking. Do you have a Ouija board?”

“Firkle!” Henrietta shouted.

“What?” Firkle asked, but his voice was too small to carry from the other side of the small, cluttered shop.

“Firkle!” Henrietta shouted again.

“I said, what!” Firkle shouted back this time, emerging from the stacks- still goth, still small.

“Cartman wants a Ouija board.”

“Yeah, follow me...” Firkle led Cartman away from the register to the other side of the bookstore, having to step around Pete stooping in an aisle, separating the non-conformist authors from the conformist ones. Once alone, Firkle asked, “is Kenny dead again?”

“That's what I mean to find out,” Cartman explained.

Firkle forgot about Kenny's specific deaths like most everyone else, but he remembered Kenny telling him that he did regularly die and visit Hell before resurrecting, and unlike most everyone else, Firkle believed him. He found the box with Ouija boards in the storage closet, but came back empty-handed, save for a proposition. “You don't want to use some bullshit made by Hasbro, you want a real board imbued with power.”

“You've got one?”

“Yeah, hold on,” Firkle showed the most movement out of any of the other workers by taking a jog back to the register.

Cartman grabbed an anthology of Lovecraft off a nearby shelf and pretended to read from “At the Mountains of Madness” as he listened to bits and pieces of an argument from Firkle, trying to convince Michael and Henrietta to help perform a seance. Then he got a text from Butters. 

Where are you? Do you know where Kenny is?

Cartman replied. Downtown. Still looking for Ken. Wait for me at my apartment if you're heading my way. Spare key in the lockbox. Code is 6920.

In the end, Firkle was allowed the borrow the good Ouija board, and the shop was closed for a séance. Cartman and the goths sat down in the back room of the shop- a card table, a few folding chairs, piles of the owner's junk, a mini-fridge, and a dusty window opened to let out stale cigarette smoke. Even with the light on the room was dark, it was naturally swallowed up by the thick, uneven green paint glopped over the walls. Everyone lit up a cigarette and a took a seat around the oujia board set on the table, with Firkle taking the lead on the ceremony, guiding the others to place hands on the dial of the board and let their deep breathing sync together under a veil of smoke. “Spirits of the dead, we gathered and living summon you to join us at our table. Give us a sign of your presence. ”

No one person at the table guided the dial, but it slowly guided them all to 'HELLO' on the board.

“We wish to speak with the spirit of Kenny McCormick. Is he among the dead?”

The dial started to move toward NO, but someone resisted, and the dial remained stuck between NO and YES.

All eyes at the table fell upon Cartman accusingly. Henrietta objected, “Cartman, there are other people at this table.”

“It's not me!” Cartman protested, “it must be Kenny. He's fucking with me.”

The goths looked at each other in turn. There was something about Cartman's reaction to the answer of the board. Firkle tried to press on. “Do the spirits know where Kenny is?”

The dial began to move, slowly and deliberately spelling: HAND OF DEVIL.

Pete asked, “what does that mean?,” but Cartman had no answer. 

Michael wanted to know, “why did he go missing?”

The board spelled it out. FOR MONEY.

An ear-rending metallic screech broke the spell of the séance as Cartman kicked out his chair from the table, sweating from his brow despite the unnatural chill in the room. The others remained speechless, but Firkle tried to continue, pressing, “Cartman, sit down, I want to ask the spirit more questions.” 

“Fuck off- this was a stupid idea- I have to go,” Cartman gasped, charging out the door with Firkle following after. 

Outside the storefront, Cartman collapsed onto the bottom of the stone steps, cupping his face in his trembling hands. 

Firkle sat down close beside Cartman, watching the water that welled in his eyes, and the hands he curled into tight fists. Cartman pulled a pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket to tuck one between quavering lips, but he couldn't get a match to strike in the wind to light it. Firkle cupped a hand near Cartman's face and lit his cigarette for him. 

“I want to help find him,” Firkle offered.

“Fine. I mean, thanks,” Cartman mumbled. “Butters and Tweek are waiting at my apartment. They're helping too.”

“We can take my car.” Firkle grabbed at Cartman's hand and tugged him to his feet, actively pulling him toward his old black honda civic parked across the street. The inside stunk of cigarettes. The backseat littered with disposable coffee cups, library books, and CDs. The center island between the seats was dominated by the entire discography of Nine Inch Nails and a machete in a black sheathe. The driver seat was raised as high up and as far forward as it could go so that Firkle could more easily reach the pedals and see out the windows.

Cartman wouldn't say he was a fan of NIN, but he didn't mind it. He liked the music video for Hurt, and he did recall having sex with Kenny while Closer played once. It was music that suited him feeling betrayed. 

“You wished that he was dead,” Firkle spoke up. “When we asked if Kenny was among the dead. You didn't want the board to say no. You tried to move the dial to yes.”

“Maybe I did wish he was dead. But I didn't try to move the dial.”

“I felt you-”

“But it wasn't me.”

Firkle paused for the duration of a red stoplight until it turned green. “I believe you.”

The rest of the car ride to Cartman's apartment passed in silence. Out on the street before the building he recognized Tweek's car, which was no surprise, but Craig's car was also parked there, and the driver was just stepping out as they arrived.

“Craig?” Cartman moved to meet him once Firkle parked. “What are you doing here?”

Craig grimaced just to be addressed by Cartman, grappling over whether or not he should even answer him. “If finding Kenny is so important to Tweek, I'll help. And that's all the two of us will do, help find Kenny. Nothing else. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” Cartman nodded, trying to stay level in response to this unexpected development. Having Craig around threw a wrench in things, and with Firkle also along for the ride, his little apartment would get crowded. He led them inside the apartment complex, up three flights of stairs, and down the hall. The building was not made well, and certain sounds from their neighbors spilled out into the halls. Daytime TV from one, a crying baby from another, and the sounds of sex from the third. 

Steady, rhythmic bashing of bodies against a wall echoing in the empty space of an unfurnished apartment. The sound of it made the three of them stop and listen. Cartman and Firkle looked to Craig, who was stunned into pallor, because the sounds of sex were coming from Cartman's apartment. 

Cartman opened the door to reveal the congress in progress. Butters standing on tip-toe, hands and cheek planted on the wall wearing nothing but his white flats and a blue cut-off tanktop. Tweek holding onto him tightly from behind with his jeans hanging loosely around his hips- twisting and jerking his body amidst strangled cries. Out of his stupor he looked back over his shoulder to see Cartman, Firkle, and Craig.

“O-oh, Jesus!” Tweek stumbled back from the wall with his eyes gaped as wide as Butters' backside- which made a nasty, slick popping sound upon withdrawal and leaked with white fluid.

Craig covered his face with one hand and held out the other, briskly walking away down the hall.

“Fuck! Oh, fuck! Fuck! Fucking Jesus, no! Wait! It was a mistake!” Tweek could hardly fasten his pants and belt back on, still leaking from his rapidly diminishing erection, trembling and wobbling to the door just in time to hear Craig slam the door to the stairwell. His mouth hung open and he stood staring there so long that the others out in the hall just moved past him into the apartment.

That solves that problem, Cartman thought to himself.

“H-hey, fellas!” Butters stammered awkwardly, not letting his compromised position stop him from welcoming the host and his guests home. His knees knocked and his erect cock wagged as he bent over to scoop up his black Nike boy shorts and peel them up over his naked backside.

Firkle made himself useful and put on some coffee, somehow unphased by what he'd seen.

Cartman crossed the room with a smug grin and slapped a hand to Butters' bottom. “You little slut,” he whispered deviously.

“Come on, Eric...” Butters whined, feeling Tweek's seed drip out of him and down the back of his leg. Craig leaving Tweek was definitely his fault this time. Long story short, once they got to Cartman's empty apartment without anything else to pass the time, they got to talking about why their exes kicked them to the curb. They were both too bad and too rotten to be with good people. That was easy to accept when they said it about themselves, but Butters knew Tweek was a good person, and Tweek knew Butters was a good person. They started to comfort each other...And things got out of hand.

Firkle offered Tweek a cup of coffee and gently guided him inside to close the door.

The four of them sat in a circle in the vacant living room; drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes as a light rain fell outside. A few hundred dollars, a machete, and four lost losers, ready for anything, with nothing to go home to. That was the start of the new gang. The New Coon & Friends.


	14. Chapter 14

With nothing furnishing Cartman's apartment, a late-night trip had to be made to procure needed supplies. To Firkle's chagrin, Cartman chose Walmart. Firkle hated Walmart. He hated that Walmart specifically, for taking the last year of his life, before he and the Goths came across the rare & used bookstore and quit. Any excuse to fuck Walmart over suited him just fine, so when Cartman told him to shoplift a pre-paid phone and a couple of other things, he readily agreed. He knew precisely which black domes on the ceiling were the fake cameras, and which aisles went unwatched. He'd learned all he needed to know from working there and observing shoplifters; shoplifters that caused so many local police phone calls in one year that Walmart was declared a nuisance by the city government- they were told to not bother calling unless $50 or more of goods were stolen.

Inside Walmart, without breaking stride, Firkle took a plastic clamshell case holding a pre-paid phone off a display hanger and quickly carved into the back of it with a utility knife he kept at his belt line. The plastic was rugged and the surfaces of the case were uneven, but Firkle was handy with a knife. He'd been given his first by a family friend for Christmas-- a multi-tool with several blades inside. He took it with him wherever he went until a teacher noticed and confiscated it from him. The first of many. A good knife felt like an extension of his body, an expression of something small but sharp, so he couldn't go without it. 

Butters hadn't been told about the plan to shoplift, so when he caught Firkle in action, the whites of his eyes popped into full view and he stumbled forward to ask in alarm, “what are you doing?”

“Cartman told me to,” Firkle mumbled, not turning his head back to address him, staying the course, keeping his eyes ahead as he rotated the phone case in one hand and eased the cutter along in his other hand.

Butters heaved under a sagging bundle of cheap new clothes in his arms, replacements for all that he'd left back home, and hissed under his breath in reply, “that doesn't mean you have to do it!” 

Firkle rolled his eyes, pocketing the phone and stashing the case behind some paper towels in the next aisle. “Could have fooled me.”

Butters looked to Cartman for some explanation, but he was filling up his own pockets as well. 

Cartman had money enough to pay for everything he had on his list, but stealing it gave him a thrill and reminded him of Kenny; foraging for a meal or hunting for sport in the overexposed plastic growth of chain stores and supermarkets. Unfortunately, Tweek and Butters were threatening to spoil the fun by drawing too much attention. An employee of the store started moving toward them. Cartman put himself in the employee's line of sight to keep her from seeing Firkle, and he whispered to Tweek, “just try to act natural.”

“I can't,” Tweek gulped. He was an accomplice again. His sins licked at his heels and made him break out in a cold sweat.

Cartman signaled Tweek to a nearby aisle across the way. “Go walk over there.”

Eyes asquint with anxious fatigue under the dim, flickering white-blue lights, reflected garishly off the scuffed but finished concrete floor, Tweek nervously crossed the aisle and wound up in family planning. The sight of this nervous young man going into such an aisle piqued the interest of the circumspect Walmart employee, who approached and asked, “sir, are you alright?”

Though he hadn't stolen anything himself, Tweek rattled with nervous energy and rubbed at the back of his neck, smoothing out hairs standing on end. “I don't know.” 

“What's wrong?” she asked. 

She looked familiar. 'Porsche,' her nametag read. Black, shoulder length hair. Lots of makeup; purple eye shadow, hot pink blush, black mascara, and red lipstick. Long legs, small waist, and other such details that Tweek would have paid more attention to if he was into girls. Thinking on it enough, he recalled that she worked at Raisins back in South Park. He'd been there attending a birthday of Clyde's. He hadn't wanted to go, but Craig was going; for the hot wings if not for his friend. With that nagging memory sorted, Tweek tried to get Porsche to leave him be, further distressed by being reminded of Craig. “I couldn't tell you, really...”

Porsche reached for the emergency contraception pills that Tweek seemed to be looking at, asking him, “Are you looking for these?”

Tweek went ahead and grabbed, it mumbling along, “yeah, thank you.”

Porsche tilted her head and frowned. “Is there anything else I can help you with? You still look so upset.”

“I cheated on my boyfriend,” Tweek blurted out.

“Oh, my god!” Porsche gasped and then scrunched her brow with confusion, “wait, but those are...” she trailed off, realizing the implication that had thrown her thinking off track. “So you cheated on your boyfriend with a girl and you might have knocked her up?”

Tweek nodded along, just following whatever conclusion Porsche leapt to, freshly consumed with guilt that made him rake his nails over his forearms and hunch over from the spasms of muscles drawing painfully taut in his back and shoulders.

Porche looked deep in thought, considering what advice she might give Tweek. “Do you still want to get back with him? Or be with this new girl?”

“I shouldn't be with anyone! I'm the worst!” Tweek cupped his face in his hands, shrinking further from where he stood. 

“You're not the worst!” Porsche reached a hand out to Tweek's shoulder. “The worst people don't even care about cheating, you know?”

“But it's not even the first time it's happened...” 

With Tweek blurting out as much as he did about the lurid details of his failed love life, Porsche had completely forgotten about the potential acts of shoplifting in progress nearby. The only person still trying to stop it, Butters, complained to Firkle,“we didn't come out here to help Cartman do this kind of stuff. We came to help Kenny.”

“Speak for yourself,” Firkle said.

Butters didn't understand. After all that had happened, how could they be carrying on like this?

“He doesn't mind getting his hands dirty to help Kenny,” Cartman crowed, and it made Butters bristle up.

“I don't see how this is helping Kenny. When are you going to explain what really happened to him?”

A long, uncomfortable pause ensued before Cartman offered an explanation. He unwrapped a snack cake that he'd shoplifted and ate it right then to fill the silence, only speaking after he'd licked the last dollop of cream off his thumb and let the plastic wrapper flutter to the ground. “He's being held for ransom. I owe money to the kidnappers.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously. Are you going to help or aren't you?”

Butters had more questions certainly, but if it was true the answers didn't matter terribly. Cartman had announced something dire so casually, but sometimes that's just how he reacted to dire news, after the initial shock wore off. “I know there's nothing Kenny wouldn't do for me...So, yeah, I'll help. Who kidnapped him?”

“Someone calling themselves 'the Devil's Hand'.”

In his eavesdropping, Firkle recalled the impromptu séance he'd given Cartman at the book store. He'd never been in one like that. That's why he'd followed Cartman. In a lifetime of searching for confirmation of the other side, the closest he'd ever come was meeting Kenny McCormick, who disappeared for months at a time and claimed to have been in hell each time. He'd disappeared again, and Firkle felt that if he went looking he'd learn if the claims were true.

All in all, with their shopping completed, Firkle had stolen a pre-paid cellphone, shoe goo, black nail polish, and sourpatch kids, but bought a pack of clove cigarettes before the group arrived at the empty express register. Cartman had stolen snack cakes and a police scanner, but bought a pair of inflatable beds, necessary toiletries for four, and a plethora of groceries. Butters hadn't stolen a thing, and bought a pile of thin, cheap clothes made in China. Arriving at the register, the party noticed that Tweek had gotten there first, and he seemed to be chatting in a familiar way with a pair of female employees. Firkle recognized them, but did not greet them. They may or may not have recognized Firkle, but did not greet him either, carrying on their conversation with Tweek, who obliviously divulged at length, “-he was my first. I don't want to stop knowing him, because he's helped me so much in the past, but I don't want to cause him anymore pain.”

“And you shouldn't cause yourself pain either!” Porsche commiserated. “Maybe you should see where things go with this new girl?” 

Just as he was about to reply, Tweek finally noticed the others at the register and bit his tongue to keep from speaking out, furtively looking at Butters. He gave Porsche a noncommittal grunt and a mumbled thank you for hearing him out. Waiting for the goods to be bagged and payed for, he grabbed and tugged at the coarse material of his button-up shirt. He breathed in deep, too fast at first, but he evened out after a moment. He felt drab and dreary looking at Butters, admiring his colorful fashion sense and his unwavering smile. If he tried to get close to him, where would it lead? He saw lips moving, making small talk, but his tinnitus flared with a fierce ringing in his ears and he couldn't focus; the noise falling in tone with the old, buzzing lights overhead. 

As the party left Walmart, Tweek sucked in one last preparatory bale of air through his nose, stepped in alongside Butters, and offered to carry one of his shopping bags for him. He had thought up plenty to say, but it all got stopped up at his throat. His lips quirked into this position or that, preparing to start a sentence with such and such consonant, his tongue cocked back in his mouth ready to fire, but nothing passed by the scrutiny of his inner critic. He decided to wait after all, until he could speak to Butters alone, and the chance came once they dropped off the new stuff at the car. Cartman pointed out a Party City just across the parking lot that he wanted to go to with Firkle for reasons unknown, and he asked if Butters and Tweek would get take-out from the Buffalo Wild Wings also nearby. 

On their walk across the parking lot, Tweek continued to struggle with picking the right opener to a conversation about their relationship; which was not an easy subject to broach, given that they were both effectively on breaks from their respective boyfriends, and had rebounded hard against the wall in Cartman's apartment just a few hours ago. Looping strands of thoughts bundled together and frustrated him. He chewed on his lip and scratched at a splotchy rash on his chest. He got flare-ups of red, splotchy rashes now and then when he got stressed. Everything flared up when he got stressed. His hands began to shake and he felt invisible needles pricking his skin. Then something soft slid across the palm of his right hand. His fingers tensed like an animal caught in a trap, but relaxed once he realized that it was Butters holding his hand. 

Butters was more perceptive than people gave him credit for. Acting humble and dumb around other people was just that, acting. He could tell that Tweek was struggling to talk. He hadn't before. They'd talked openly and profoundly on the drive to Denver and in Cartman's apartment...They had gone through similar ordeals and understood each other. He'd like if they could continue being that way, because he didn't know if he could carry on alone. Teasing with a smirk, he broke the silence between them. “I thought you would have loosened up after we had sex.”

Tweek laughed. “Maybe you should be on top next time.” Butters joined in with a giggle of his own before speaking more earnestly. 

“If you still want to try and patch things up with Craig, I understand.”

“I wouldn't patch things up with me, if I were him,” Tweek frowned, feeling a tickle over his wrist as Butters gently swiped his thumb across it. “I told myself that I would be honest with him, and I wasn't. I couldn't. Because he wouldn't understand. His dad gave him grief about being gay, but he never put a gun to his head, or made him deliver meth to his clients. I can't talk about that shit to him!”

Butters just nodded. “One time, my dad left me chained up in the basement with a dead woman. Well, she wasn't dead at first. I saw him hit her in the back of the head with a shovel at the top of the basement stairs, and I think she was still alive at the bottom of the stairs, for a while at least.” That had been after one runaway attempt too many, just when he was starting to experiment with presenting himself as Marjorine. 

“Jesus Christ,” Tweek muttered, shivering from the cold night air. He continued to hold hands with Butters when entering the Buffalo Wild Wings, ordering to-go from the hostess, and sitting side-by-side in a booth, splitting a pitcher of coffee. The feeling in his fingers, being laced up to another hand, made him feel level. Late at night was his favorite time to have coffee, too. Sitting with someone late at night, he felt people were at their most honest. Too tired to not be your authentic self.

Butters topped off Tweek's cup and then his own from the pitcher. Tweek took it as is and Butters filled his own with creamer and sugar. He liked watching the creamer unfurl from the bottom of an inky black cup, turning it to a deep, warm tan. He took a sip before speaking. “Kenny told me he'd kill my dad if I asked him to. I hope we find him. I'd hate to think I missed my chance.”

“Wonder if he'd help me do the same.” Tweek sat in close. He felt bony next to Butters, who was fit, but a bit thick about the thighs. He'd noticed that he was sensitive there too, up at the inner thigh. He got excited thinking of it, but Craig kept popping into his thoughts. People like to assume they're in control of their minds, but there are exceptions, aren't there? Telling yourself not to think about something, for example, was self-defeating. He accepted that Craig would continue to pop into his thoughts, just as he had done for years and years before. Rather than wallow in it like he used to, he decided to try and ignore it. Getting back together with Craig had been short-lived. He went places Craig couldn't follow and he'd found someone new to move on with. He wouldn't be living in a cozy apartment brewing coffee and watching pets together. Not right away. There were some unsavory things he'd have to do first. “Though, if he doesn't turn up...We'll make due.”

Meanwhile, at Party City, Cartman shuffled through costumes on a clothing rack and spoke to his mother on the phone, assuaging her concern about all the 'rumors' she had been hearing in town. “No Mom, everything is fine, just ignore what people are saying, okay?” 

“Alright, hun!” Liane acquiesced at once, only further offering her assistance. “You don't want me to drive up there, do you? I can bring you some things...”

“No, Mom, I'm fine, thank you. Look-I can't be long, and you can't call back to this number- call Butters first if you need to get in touch with me. That's what I wanted to tell you.”

“Okay sugar bear, I love you! Make good choices!” Liane hung up. She had a date to go to. 

There weren't many costumes that came in Cartman's size, like they didn't want him to dress up as this or that. 'Tough shit', Cartman thought. If people didn't want to see a fat, dumpy Batman they shouldn't have put Ben Affleck in the last one. He'd piece together the cape and belt from this, the mask and claws from that, and alter it as needed.   
Firkle interrupted, peering out from the side, a good head or two shorter than Cartman. “Why do you need a costume?”

Quick to defend himself, Cartman clutched the bundle of costumery to his chest like a prize miniature dog under attack by a normal-sized dog. “It's psychological warfare, Firkle!”

Nonplussed, Firkle scrutinized each costume accessory picked out in turn. “You're going to take a fake gun with you?”

Cartman picked up one with a more realistic action in the slide, with a bright orange cap that could easily be removed. If it was good enough to work in a movie it would work in real life. “Could I get a little less backchat, please? I've done this before, thank you.”

“But why are you a cat.”

Nearly shouting in indignation, Cartman caught himself and instead cautiously hissed, “I'm not a cat! I'm The Coon!”

“Who?”

'You know damn well who the Coon is, everyone does,' thought Cartman to himself with indignant fury. Maybe he wasn't known for being a hero, or even an anti-hero, but he was known. And that deserved respect. The mask deserved respect.“You're not going on this mission if you don't dress up.”

“As what?” Firkle asked.

“I don't care-” Cartman threw up a hand palm-up, gesturing to the infinite possibilities available. “Call yourself the Fantastic Firkle- just not normal Firkle!” Normal people get killed doing this sort of thing, after all. A super powered ego had the power to defy fate.

“Alright,” Firkle shrugged. He took a slow spin in place, craning his head up at the store shelves. He picked up a pumpkin head, a skull head, a bat heat; only to put down each in turn, grimacing with some internal dissatisfaction. Coming up with something original and complementary to 'The Coon' was difficult. Cartman continued to grab other things willy-nilly, but Firkle took on great agony inventing his new secret identity. His instincts told him that this was important. If he was going to be near combat he'd have his knives and his machete, but the costume needn't necessarily incorporate those elements.

Milling around, digging through bargain bin dvds before forgetting he didn't have a dvd player, buying a bag of reese's pieces to snack on, Cartman gave Firkle a good ten minutes before approaching to ask, “Have you got something together?”

Firkle presented for his approval a dark grey squirrel mask, a riding suit, and a faux fur cape covering the tail- all matted down with splotches of fake blood. “Road Kill,” he announced.

“That's alright, I guess.” Not as iconic as the Coon, but that's for the best, since he's a sidekick. 

With all their side shopping finished, the gang returned to Firkle's car, and Firkle warned them, under pain of death, not to eat the chicken wings while in the car. 

Back at the apartment, with everything sorted into its rightful place; wings in bellies, air in inflatable beds, sheets on the beds, et cetera-- it was time to go to sleep. Butters knew Cartman would complain about his back in the morning on the inflatable, so he thought 'why not shell out for an actual bed', but he kept that to himself. Just another bad decision made for the sake of short-lived convenience. Butters shared one of the inflatable beds with Tweek, which left Cartman pleased that he'd get one all to himself, but Firkle decided that he'd spend the night rather than go back to his place. He couldn't risk missing Kenny returning or something interesting happening.

Heads stayed on pillows and not a word was uttered, but internal noise kept them all awake. 

Tweek and Butters lay close together, front to back. Tweek had dressed down to his boxers and Butters was wearing a silky pair of pajama bottoms. Butters shifted with distraction from the fingers curled over his hip and the male anatomy flexing against his backside. Tweek tried to stay still so as not to disturb Butters, but he was unused to being the big spoon, and his arm threaded under the next pillow seemed like it'd go numb if he kept it there. Focusing on the presence of each other, their breathing fell in sync, and they eventually did fall asleep.

Firkle and Cartman lay apart, back to back. Cartman sagged, unbalanced, towards one side of the mattress, unable to distribute his weight evenly. Brimming with pent frustration that he'd quashed all day; his hands clutched at nothing, and his eyes filmed with tears, red and irritated from a lack of sleep. He lamented that dying with Kenny back in that truck would have been tragically romantic. Living like this was just tragic, with none of the romance. He rolled onto his back and looked at the darkened ceiling. His body began to fall asleep after staying still and slack for long enough, and if he'd just let it happen he'd have slipped peacefully into sleep-- but he fought it with the last sliver of his consciousness, and found himself paralyzed below the neck. He couldn't tell if he was awake or asleep. There arose from the foot of the bed a wide and malevolent shadow, casting him in darkness, with pointed ears atop its head and a piercing stare from behind a bandit's mask. It loomed over him until consciousness failed him; falling into a frightful, dreamless sleep.


	15. Chapter 15

Cartman woke up to Firkle straddling his body- with his face up close and his painted fingers creeping up his jawline. “Stay still,” Firkle told him, bracing his legs across Cartman's side as if he were holding on to a horse ready to buck. Nearly crossing his eyes to see, Cartman noticed that Firkle wasn't intensely staring at him, but a spider perched on his nose. He seized up, ready to let out a burst of movement to get away, but Firkle continued to grasp him tightly and bid him to stay still- brushing fingers across his nose and cheek trying to guide the spider onto his hand and off of Cartman's face. With the spider relenting and diverting its crawl to climb onto Firkle's finger, it was brought to the porch and released outside. Firkle stayed out on the porch with it and smoked a cigarette in his pajamas- black fleece bottoms and a tank-top with some band name made illegible by a branching, elaborate font. 

With some discomfort, Cartman realized that his body had responded to the diminutive goth climbing all over him. Taking in his surroundings further, he noticed the unoccupied inflatable bed beside him, and then heard the telltale sounds of sex in the shower- just under the beating of falling water and a running fan. _“Assholes,”_ he thought. They were christening all the spots he was supposed to with Kenny. He may as well get a new apartment entirely. 

Ignoring his own needy throbbing, Cartman rolled out of bed in his boxers and carried through with the momentum to get onto his feet and go into the kitchen, pulling yesterday's dirty shirt on over his bare torso. In the kitchen, flimsy cabinets bristled with excessive layers of off-white paint, drawers squeaked, and faux-linoleum bubbled itself off the floor, begging to be redone. He took a moment to compose himself- and nothing composed him like looking into a freshly stocked fridge. He basked in the appliance's soothing bounty and chilling air, glowing from within with breakfast possibilities. 

One thing was certain, he could not make pancakes and bacon again. If he remembered right, he'd eaten pancakes and bacon just about every morning for the last week. He had to consider that he was cooking for Tweek, Butters, and Firkle besides himself. He wasn't feeling partial to any one thing, so he put more thought into what they might want. To his understanding of them; Firkle wouldn't care what he ate after a cigarette, Butters would want something sweet, and Tweek would probably just eat coffee. Rather, Tweek would drink coffee in substitution of eating something. Considering all that, why bother making breakfast? He smelled tobacco and clove from down the hall and then caught Firkle moving toward the front door. “Where are you going?” Cartman asked.

“Dunkin Donuts,” Firkle replied. Cartman swung the fridge door shut to the sound of sealing air and rattling bottles, stomping over to Firkle in a rush. “I want to go with you,” Cartman said.

“You're not wearing any pants,” Firkle replied after giving him a look.

“I know that,” Cartman scoffed, betrayed by his eyes shooting down toward his bare legs in realization. Rather than go to get pants to wear, he snatched up his keys from the counter and started toward the door. “I mean, I don't give a fuck. I'll go like this.”

“It's raining outside,” Firkle warned, if only to see Cartman dig himself deeper into a lie over something so silly.

“Well, if you want a raincoat, I may as well grab one for myself,” Cartman blustered, spinning about-face to walk back into the kitchen and scrabble through a low drawer to grab a pair of yellow hooded PVC rain slickers. He thrust one upon Firkle, who resisted taking it at first, but ended up putting it on anyway. It was curious to see him wearing so much yellow. 

The rain outside kept everyone's heads down, each person lost in their own pressing business that kept them out in the weather rather than in shelter. Colorful rain slickers and umbrellas popped against grey urbanity, but they also blended together. It was hard to notice anyone for something besides the color of their coat or umbrella, bundled inside or obscured beneath. 

Just off the highway, the Dunkin Donuts they drove to sat isolated in a lot with just a bank and a 7-11 on either side, relatively underdeveloped compared to the lot on the other side of the highway. The armored car parked outside Dunkins and the pair of men in dark blue raincoats going inside caught Cartman's attention immediately. One of the two men from the armored truck was walking faster, with some urgency, forcefully pushing open the door. Cartman guessed at the cause and was proven right, seeing the rushing man shunt toward the bathroom rather than the register. This aligning of coincidences made it hard for Cartman to resist. He followed the rushing man to the restroom, the hood of his rain slicker still up to obscure his face. 

Firkle turned his head at Cartman breaking away without a word, continuing up to the counter without him. He needed a coffee and several maple bars. The wait for his turn in line left Firkle time to check his phone. The messages from his friends advocated for him not to get carried away with ghost hunting again, which was decidedly ungoth of them. Firkle had no doubt that he could face the truth of undeath and retain his memory as Cartman had done. However, if Cartman was the only one to know, what explained his ability? Following him, and what he did, it seemed a certainty to encounter something not of this world. A demon to attract other demons. A part of Cartman's power that must be in the persona of the Coon, Firkle reasoned. That's why Cartman had Firkle come up with “Road Kill”. Who is Road Kill? A junky car, a machete, a furred-suit covered in blood. A sidekick to the Coon. What would a sidekick do? He would inhabit the role to find out.

Without really thinking about it, Firkle had kept his eyes on the other guard from the armored truck, only noticing that he'd been doing it when he had looked away from the counter, brought out of his tracking stare by the woman at the register asking what he'd like to order. There was a small queue of people waiting for their orders to be called out successively; dripping from their raincoats, looking down at their phones or letting their eyes glaze over the donuts on display. The other guard, seeing that it would be a few minutes for his number to be called, decided to also use the restroom. “Follow him,” Firkle thought. Cartman had something in mind following the first one. What had he done once they were alone in there? They're guards to an armored car that transports money, Cartman desperately wants money to find Kenny. He probably knocked the guy out.

The second guard arriving to the bathroom pushed the door open to find the lights out. He felt further along the wall for a lightswitch. Two small hands pressed into his back, bracing for a violent push. Shoved forward, thrown off balance, he tripped and hit his head on the sink.

As the door behind them closed, they were plunged into darkness.

“Good work,” Cartman said in a purposefully gruff and unnatural tone, turning the light on. He was wearing the blue rain coat of the armored car guard. The guard he'd taken out in similar fashion he restrained with the guard's own belt. “You've got a few minutes before he's likely to come around. Do as I did.” he cinched the pull-strings of the slicker's hood fully to better obscure his face, tugged on a pair of gloves, and took each guard's gun, continuing to lay out his plan as Firkle snapped to it. “I'm going to rush the back office to take out whatever surveillance hardware they've got, you take what you can from the armored car and be ready to drive before I get back.”

Waiting until he got to the register, Cartman wheeled out his stolen guns to threaten all the space around him at once into complying with his demands. Phones in hands dropped, hands up, customer and employee alike corralled into the back to face the wall. 

Meanwhile, Firkle crouched low to the ground and slipped out of the building, using the keys he'd lifted to get into the armored car. There was only one bag, but it must have weighed about seventy-five pounds. A good twenty pounds on what he was used to carrying for work, but he managed to carry it to his car. By the time he'd loaded it up and started the car, Cartman was dashing out to meet him with computer hardware under one arm and bags of donuts in the other, still awkwardly holding both pistols, the car pitching to the side as he threw himself down in the passenger seat. 

“Onto the highway, go north,” Cartman instructed. He stashed the guns in the glove compartment, pulled his blue raincoat off over his head, and then took the wheel for Firkle to do the same, cracking down the window and peering out into the foggy rain behind them. “No one following. The Dunkins had SD analog cameras recording to DVR,” he said of the hardware he'd taken, picking up Firkle's multi-tool from the car's center console to disable the money bag's anti-theft measures. All told, the bag contained less than one-hundred thousand dollars. If he made an advance on what he owed, maybe he could recover some of his and Kenny's things from the South Park impound. 

After making distance on the highway, cutting off-road, and getting out of sight, Firkle voiced his disbelief. “That was really easy.” He knew Cartman had been doing this sort of thing since he was very young, but they had no trouble at all. Was there nothing that they had overlooked?

Cartman considered the same, but in his mind it all squared away. He was the one who robbed the restaurant, and he hid his face from the guards and staff. He took out the camera recordings and shut down the system for their getaway, directly onto a highway with no other camera having a clear shot at them in the rainy fog, no vehicle pursuing them, tracking device in the bag from the armored car disabled. They'd hand off the money to the Mayor and let her launder it as always. He even remembered to get donuts, with money from the register jammed into the takeaway bags. Witness accounts shouldn't give too many hints, everyone was in their own personal morning fog before the robbery happened. There was always a chance of getting caught, but that was one of the neater jobs he'd done. “Let's go over the mountains now while it's still quiet, I'll call Barbrady.”

Hanging fog obscured the sky, covering up a magic trick as the falling rain transformed into drifting snow, and all the colors in the world faded to a muted blue. They listened to the police scanner with bated breath for the aftermath of their misdeeds. It didn't come up right away. A drunk loiterer that started a fight outside an Arby's and a domestic disturbance at an apartment building were detailed before priority messages congregated on the feed. A heavy-set Caucasian male in his mid-twenties affecting a deep voice robbed the Dunkin Donuts at gunpoint and caused property damage. The armored car parked outside was also robbed and its guards were found restrained in the restroom. Connected incidents, suggesting more than one perpetrator, though this was not visually confirmed. The employees were in the backroom, but the manager ran to one of the drive-thru windows once the coast was clear and saw a black sedan speeding north. Didn't see the plates in all the fog. The dispatch went quiet for several minutes before another call came in about a stolen 2012 Honda Odyssey. They caught the guy a few minutes later trying to rob a smoke shop. Cartman shut off the feed and let out a nervous sigh, putting his seat back at a steeper angle and getting a donut to eat, shaking off a fifty dollar note from the till that was stuck to the chocolate icing. 

Cartman spoke up after a few mile markers and donut holes. “You can swap plates at the impound, and you should probably get a different paint job.” Firkle looked at him between bites of a maple bar, with a blank and unyielding expression. The cause for said expression was easy enough to intuit, with Cartman catching on and reeling with frustration,“there has to be a color you're okay with that's not fucking black!” No response. It wasn't up for debate. Cartman offered, “a different black car, then,” and that sat alright with Firkle, so he called up their fixer, the Mayor. Firkle could hear the Mayor's voice over the phone, escalating in tone and volume with each excuse Cartman tried to make following 'we hit an armored truck'. She put Cartman in his place, and it was clear that he could barely stomach it. Cartman must have thought a big turnabout of a score out of the blue would get him in her good graces, but it seemed to have quite the opposite effect. She'd take the money, they could swap out Firkle's car, but Kenny's truck was staying in the impound and Cartman wasn't entering city limits. 

Firkle continued driving until a diner came into view; the one he used to go to with the rest of the goths when their nightly excursions took them out of town. It called to passerby with red neon letters on a white sign, and an exterior painted with that one soft shade of green you might see on a 1972 Cadillac Eldorado. It looked cozy and familiar at night, but in the light of day it looked garishly plain. He couldn't remember ever seeing it in such a state. It bordered on the surreal, as if he'd been stopped on Space Mountain, and all the lights had been turned on to reveal the drab warehouse that once held his sense of child-like wonder. He parked in front of the diner to let Cartman get out of the car and drove on to South Park without him.

Hurrying in to the diner out of the cold, with the wind whipping his bare legs, Cartman claimed the empty table nearest the door and let the wad of sticky, stolen money in his hand out onto the counter, flattening it into a more presentable state, in order of denomination. With a surplus of funds for breakfast, he made a quick study of the breakfast menu, taking note of the specials before someone came to stand beside his table. Without looking up from the menu, he preempted the waitress with a “good morning,” before continuing, “I would like the biscuits & gravy with extra sausage, a full order of hash-browns, a half order of the seasonal fruit bowl, and a Spanish coffee, thank you.” 

Such rudeness suited the waitress just fine. She didn't regard the fat, pants-less blob for more than tips, just as he didn't regard her for more than bringing him food. He ordered plenty over the course of an hour, and was happy to tip generously for a service worker not putting on an act and bothering him with inane, perfunctory questions or comments. You know, waiters and waitresses who say shit like “good choice!” after you order. The world would be better off if the waitress could get a living allowance by the state and a robot did her job for her. Cartman ruminated on such things for the duration of the meal, and the waitress thought about that drunken barn dance over twenty years ago where she once rolled in the hay with the mother of that fat blob she was serving.

The solitude of the empty diner struck a harmonic chord with Cartman and helped him to relax, but a ring of the bell by the door announced the end of it. Feeling full after breakfast, but still wanting something for later, Cartman waited for the shadow of the waitress to appear by his table before asking for “a cinnamon bun to go- and can you tell me what the seasonal pie is this month?” Rather, he would have asked that, if he hadn't suddenly been slapped in the face before getting to 'seasonal pie'. Cartman looked up to reproach the waitress that he'd set down a twenty dollar tip for, but seeing that it was Wendy Testaburger standing over him, and not the waitress, there wasn't anything he could say further. 

“You're not supposed to be in South Park,” she seethed. 

“Technically-” Cartman started, only to be slapped a second time.

Wendy drew in close to speak in a lower tone, noticing her group approaching from outside, hurrying in response to her outburst; Token, Bebe, Clyde, Craig; with Stan and Kyle in tow. “The license plate of that car from the bad trade at the gas station- I knew you wouldn't have a way to look it up- check the lot of Diablo's club in Denver tonight. If you want to show your appreciation for the tip-off then don't drag Stan into this shit.” Leaving him stunned, she followed up in her normal tone for the others to hear, “you should leave, now.”

“I'm waiting for my ride- Officer Barbrady just dropped me off here- it's technically outside of South Park, after all. He's helping me move some things.” He took in the semi-circle of glares around his booth, noticing the waitress keeping her distance.

“Where's Kenny?” Kyle asked, not because he cared, but because preempting Stan by asking it first would make it look like he cared. He earned an affirmative gaze from Stan for doing so.

It irritated Cartman how 'done up' Kyle was now. How smooth and moisturized his skin looked. His curls wet and weighed down with 'product'. That cologne. Stan was no better. He gave them the benefit of the doubt for going to a fancy dinner all primped, but apparently this was a part of their routine now. “I couldn't tell you,” he shrugged in an unconvincing manner.

“Where are your pants?” Clyde asked, veering far off topic.

“Eyes up here, buddy,” Cartman directed. “I was in a rush this morning.”

“Where'd you get that money?” Token piled on to the interrogation.

“Barbrady gave me a loan.” Implausible, given the officer's pay-grade.

“Why is there chocolate on it?” Bebe asked.

“The guy loves donuts. Got some frosting on it by accident.”

“Isn't he more of an old-fashioned guy than a chocolate-icing guy? I saw him get them at Tweek's plenty while Craig was working there-” Clyde poked a hole in the story, but luckily for Cartman, or perhaps unluckily for Cartman, Craig put the interrogation back on track. “Forget the donuts! You need to tell Tweek he doesn't owe you anything.”

“Craig is right,” Wendy chimed in. “You need to dissolve this 'team-up' you're playing at.”

“It's their choice.” Cartman leaned back in his seat in the booth. He couldn't say much more than that about their cause without bringing Stan into the fold.

“You put on the mask,” Stan spoke up in realization, “didn't you?” Cartman didn't answer. “Did Kenny?” Cartman didn't answer, trying to stand up, only to be shoved back into his booth by Token, Craig, and Stan simultaneously.

Wendy at once recognized the click of a receiver as the waitress went for the old land-line against the wall, “Ma'am, it's alright, you don't need to call anyone.”

The waitress hit 9-1-1 and put the phone to her ear, crouching behind the counter as the scuffle continued. A feminine, robotic voice informed her, “your call could not be completed as dialed.” She dialed again to no avail. That young girl was looking at her intensely, doing something with her cellphone in hand. The waitress left the phone to hang off the hook by its springy black cord as she hurried into the kitchen with her head down.

“Take your hands off me,” Cartman growled, struggling against their combined grasp on him before getting pulled out of his booth. Wendy, Clyde, Bebe, and even Kyle protested as Token, Craig, and Stan each took turns shoving Cartman out of the diner, kicking him as he tumbled down the stairs into the snowy parking lot. 

_I get it already, Cartman thought wearily as they laid into him. I'm supposed to stay down, or I'll be put down. I'm the bad guy, you're the good guys. You won't stoop down to my level. In a way I'm thankful for that._

“You learn your lesson?” Token asked, letting Cartman drop back onto a knee-high hill of snow. He didn't answer, too busy trying to catch his second wind. 

“You deserved that,” Craig justified himself. 

“Yeah,” Stan agreed, “there's more where that came from if you don't stop all this.” 

Kyle crossed his arms, “he won't stop just because you beat him up.”

“True that,” Cartman spat on the ground, shifting onto his hands and knees, bracing to stand, still dazed. “If you really wanted to stay out of the game, you wouldn't get involved. I'd do a few robberies, maybe I'd slink away with my winnings, maybe I'd die or go to jail.” He could tell from the practiced form of their punches and the righteous tone in their voices that they were itching to be their costumed superegos again, despite their condemnation of him wanting to do the same.

“We couldn't care less what happens to you, it's the people you're bringing down with you.” Kyle walks closer, holding his closed-off posture.

_“I'll tell them what you said. They don't owe me. I'm on my way down. All of it. I'll them to stop following me.” Cartman slowly stood up, putting his right hand to a pain in his lower back. It caught them off guard, bringing their attention on him. “But they won't. We've got more in common than you think._

A black Dodge Challenger thundered with the revving of its engine, blaring hi-beams at the group of people gathered outside the diner. Blinded by the lights they put theirs arms up and were gripped with fear hearing the percussion of a handgun firing over and over again. The bullets scraped their parked cars and popped several tires. Cartman bull-rushed his way through the group and before they could stop him he'd dashed around to pile into the passenger side of the vehicle, it's burnout threatening to run down anyone trying to stop them before speeding away. They got a glimpse of the driver, Firkle, once the lights were off of them. 

Cartman picked up the hot pistol Firkle had left on the center console, reloading it while checking out the window behind him. They weren't followed yet, but they would be pursued in due time. He had to find out more about the gas station deal that got him and Kenny in this mess, so he had to go to that club Wendy told him about, even if she told Token and the rest of them where he'd be. Taking his eyes off the road, he put the gun into the glove box and settled into his seat, aches and pains returning to the forefront of his attention. “Nice timing,” he wheezed. “I ought to tell you- you should stop. Just drop me off in Denver and go home. I'm off the deep-end. This isn't going to end well for me or anyone following me. It never does. Any other guarantee I've tried to give you, about Kenny or about proof of an after-life, or whatever, it's all been bullshit.”

“I never cared about my life ending well,” Firkle said, feeling the adrenaline still, not wanting it to bleed away. “Living and dying like a normal person, conforming to this world- it's what I've wanted to avoid most, but it's all I've ever done.” The Challenger drove faster and faster until it was going ten, twenty miles above the speed limit. At each precipitous corner going over the mountains, the driver drifted through with the smoothness of a razor passing over a sharpening strop. “My friends think going to an underground music show, chanting pretend-spells in the attic, or being poly-amorous will make them special. They're not special. They're no different than the rest of the world's conformist chattel; cogs in the machine; kindling burning the world for the pleasure of the elite. They're going to get married, have pets and kids, and one day they won't even understand why I'm still miserable.”

Cartman let out a tense breath and a laugh, relieved when the driver started to slow down coming out of the secluded mountain pass. They were making good time on getting back to Denver quickly. “I don't think Butters or Tweek will have the same conviction you do.”

Reaching Tweek and Butters faster than Firkle's car could hope to, Craig called Tweek on the phone while waiting for a tow truck with the others, two wheels popped on Token's minivan and bullet holes in the rear door. Token, wanting to handle the matter personally, paid off those concerned to look the other way.

“It's Craig,” Tweek exhaled as if he'd been holding it for minutes straight. He'd been alone at the apartment with Butters all day, just talking between cups of coffee and clove cigarettes that Firkle left behind. He looked to Butters for support. Should he answer it? Butters nodded and Tweek took to the porch to answer the phone, watching the rain fall like it had been all day, withstanding droplets of cold water that splashed his shoulders and saturated his button-up shirt. “Craig?” He rehearsed it over and over in his head while letting the phone ring, but it still didn't come out right when he spoke aloud.

“Where are you?” Craig asked. Not the first phone call between them like this. Tweek's shoulders sagged at once. He didn't know what else he was expecting. 

“I'm at Cartman's apartment,” Tweek answered.

“Why?” Craig asked.

“Because I didn't think I had anywhere else to go.” It was hard to parse out the sound of Craig's voice against the pinging of rain against the window, forcefully droning on.

“Anywhere else would be better,” Craig retorted, his tone souring, “at least I would know you regret what you did!” 

“We're still trying to find Kenny,” Tweek explained. At the least, he and Butters were there in case Kenny turned up at the apartment.

“Where does robbery fit into that?” Craig shouted, remembering that moment of blinding light and the threat of being shot dead as he paced in heavy steps through the snow, shoulders tense, clenching his phone in his fist as if it would wring out an answer.

“I'm not robbing anyone!” Tweek shouted back.

“You have!” Craig snapped, “and Cartman told us that he's going to do it again! But he won't get away with it this time, because we'll stop him!” He stomped further and further away from his group to let out his anger into the phone. “So you better not be there on his side again- because you'll lose- and the next time you try to call me from a prison cell I'm not going to pick up.”

“Why would I call you?” Tweek said, his words taking on a frozen edge that stopped Craig in his tracks on the other end of the line. Tweek felt the chasm between them growing so much that he had no hope of bridging it, so he let it all go. The call ended. Tweek went back inside and put the phone down. They'd left the lights off all day and as evening drew near their shadows grew stronger.

Butters came near, carefully balancing a lit candle in its holder, setting it down on a low table. He'd taken the burden of helping unpack and decorate Cartman's apartment, working and talking with Tweek to forget what he'd had to leave behind, no possessions of his own to unpack. “You're soaked through!” he smiled, touching Tweek's shoulders. “Don't want to catch a cold, do you?” He started to unfasten Tweek's shirt from the top button, moving down, and down they went, making the little flame beneath them flicker. Their shadows melded and grew stronger still.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading. All comments are welcome, so please share your thoughts with me. I'm sorry this chapter took so long.


	16. Chapter 16

It's not so uncommon for there to be a thundershower in Colorado come Summer, but it was a rare rain falling that night, the start of a monsoon, with the wind reversing direction as a high pressure of heat traveled East to mix with a Southern wind, just as moisture came North from the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico to seed the clouds. A pattern of weather like this may be an ill omen to some, but it was good luck for Cartman. Less people out, slower response times, and bad weather was the bane of both the Human Kite and Call Girl, should they make an appearance to foil his plans. Cartman rolled his passenger-side window down to enjoy the rain a moment, uncaring as sheets of it slopped over the interior of Firkle's new car. It came down thick and warm against his head, neck, and shoulders, and he leaned into the wind like an old dog.

“They're coming down,” Firkle reported at a glance of his phone, keeping the car idling in the shadow of their hideout. As out of place as they were next to the low-rent apartment building, there were other curiously nice cars parked in the area.

“Yeah, I see them,” Cartman said, getting a glimpse of Butters and Tweek from the window, each hurrying around in the candle-lit apartment without their shirts on- Butters jiggling into his, Tweek stretching into his own, showing the back of his ribcage, the bumps of his spine, and the curves of his shoulder-blades, double-jointed, jutting out like a pair of axe-heads. Multiple times they would turn off the light and leave, only to burst back into the apartment for something they had forgotten. By the time they came down, Cartman had rolled his window back up, and the sight of him with just his head and hair soaked through left the late-comers puzzled.

“I've planned a robbery tonight,” Cartman announced, with all the air of a refined, married gentleman inviting his wife out to the theater, as if it were spur-of-the-moment and not the same thing they'd been doing every year for the last decade. “If you want out, here's your out,” he offered. Red lighting from the dashboard made the whole thing look more foreboding than intended, putting just the wrong shadows on his face, drawing downward-slopes from the brow to the cheekbone- the mask of a shadowy conspirator. 

Butters looked at Tweek, conveying that it was up to him to decide. Tweek hunched over, making vertebrae in his back pronounce themselves like the jagged features of a gargoyle. “This will help us bring Kenny back somehow, right?” 

“That night Kenny went missing,” Cartman prefaced, “the Mayor had offered us a job. Hitting another drug deal- right on the way, easy, practically a bonus for getting out of her hair, I thought.” He had thought that then, but some sick perception infected a wound in his psyche, made him keep wondering if it wasn't supposed to end up with them both dead. This second-guessing went unnoticed- dramatic pauses were a staple of his motivational monologues. Hot, greasy rain continued to drum across the windshield, swept left and right by the wipers, filling the silence with its squeaking metronome beat. “I didn't get into the particulars of it with Kenny, just that she'd offered, but he said he wasn't interested, so I didn't say anything more.” Rolling thunder and flashes of lightning followed, stepping on his cue to continue. “I fell asleep on the drive and I woke up to gunshots. Out of all the gas stations on the way, Kenny picked the wrong one. He'd been shot, I'd been shot, I thought we were going to bleed out on the side of the road. When I woke up he was gone, and the money we'd got was gone too.”

No one said 'what if Kenny took it for himself?' but they all thought it, even Cartman. “Someone must have found us first,” he reasoned. “maybe it was whoever those dealers from the gas station were supposed to meet, so when they found us, they took Kenny and the money.”

“Why didn't they take you too?” Firkle asked, unfazed.

“Because I'm fat as fuck, Firkle! No one is carrying my fat, fucking ass anywhere!” Cartman shouted, projecting a barrier between himself and the bigger questions at play that would keep him guessing about Kenny.

“you were saying, Eric...?” Butters prompted him so as not to get distracted.

Cartman looked out at the street, with its dim spots of orange light paling under flashes of light from the dark purple clouds overhead. “The license plate of the car we were supposed to have hit that night, it leads to the parking lot of this club downtown. I'm going in there to get answers by any means necessary.”

“I see...” Butters trailed off.

“That's not all, Token's group might come after us for doing this,” Cartman warned, casting a look over his shoulder, risking a glance at Tweek for his reaction. He expected that to make Tweek fold at once, but the look on his face said otherwise.

“Why don't they just fuck off and leave us alone?” Tweek asked, putting words to the sour expression on his face. 

“There's no 'us' anymore, not if you don't want,” Cartman assured. “You and Butters can take off and no one will come looking.”

Tweek frowned, “we're not just going to take off without helping, you and Kenny saved my life!”

“We're square Tweek, we've done just as much to fuck up your life,” Cartman said.

“At least you were something in my life.” Tweek sighed. “That's more than I can say for them. They didn't really give a shit. I thought I was going to die miserable and alone in South Park, and they would have let me do it. Now they want to get involved and say it's for my sake?” All he could think about was Craig's pride that had kept them from speaking for years. Now, that same pride would likely lead Craig to join the group out to put them away. “I'll be there. To let them know how things really are. If that's what it takes for them to see me as being more than a bystander.”

“Me too,” Butters added, swept up in the moment as the world seemed to reorient itself around them and their mission. 

Cartman nodded in affirmation.. “I'm sure they're getting ready as we speak, but they're just playing dress-up. They will come to know the difference when they see that we have transformed.” With all of them spoken for, Firkle struck out on the road. 

Passing streetlight silhouettes showed the change in stages, all of them writhing uncomfortably in the confines of the car into their costumes, breathing labored under masks obscuring their faces. The Coon squinted under the red light of the dashboard to read his scrawled directions. Ideally, he would sneak into this place, with the dedicated driver and the others outside to run interference against the would-be heroes, if need be. He could build his owed hoard for the Mayor by taking any goods from the criminal element there, as well as potentially gain info about Kenny. He had more support for this than he could have expected. Even on a stormy night like this, he was certain he was being favored by fortune, and that the stars had aligned for him to do the impossible. 

However, the alignment of stars are both pitiless and unfathomable. Moreover, the constellation tied to Kenny McCormick's destiny is not like other stars, it is cursed and malevolent.

A brick-and-mortar building came into view, with a dead neon sign spelling “Diablo's” over the door, and several black, 4-door cars parked nearby. The Coon signaled for the driver to drive by once and park out of sight. Everyone in the car tried to study the building as fast as they could before they passed. It was a sodden, crumbling building that held a warehouse on the first floor and an office on the second, both clearly out of use with the caked dust and webbed junk heaped against the inside of the shuttered windows, everything covered with graffiti; faded reds, yellows, blues, and greens making visual noise over the static, old brickwork. 

Among all of that visual noise, there was a symbol drawn on the door in bright green. Butters noticed it first and he gasped as only Butters would, forgetting his mask's persona at the sight of it. “Oh, Jesus!” Tweek exclaimed the same, one fallen facade after another in the face of some terrible revelation. Firkle saw it and had stopped driving, stopping in the middle of the road, saying nothing. Hadn't he seen that symbol somewhere before? Why did it fill him with dread? Cartman saw it last, perhaps because he didn't want to see it. All of the graffiti on the building blended together, his eyes scanning over it fruitlessly, not focusing on anything, until it came to him in a blink, and then it could not be unseen- the punctuation to a question they thought they knew the answer to: “Who is Mysterion?” 

While the others were still staring agape at the symbol, the Coon was in motion, leaving the car rocking in his wake once he had flung open the door and hurled himself out to hit the street running, kicking through iridescent puddles, charging the door like he meant to run through it and the walls beyond it without stopping. 

“Ca-” Chaos stuttered, “Coon, stop!” He rolled down the window, guessing he hadn't been heard when the Coon pressed on. “Come back...!” he called at a hiss, now furtively looking up and down the block for any activity. While craning his neck to the left he was brought back by the sound of the Coon violently wrenching the door of the building open before continuing his advance. Chaos and WT lingered on the swaying, broken door and listened for anything beyond the storm, and perhaps there was something, something terrible even, but they could not be certain.

Roadkill started the car back up and drove around the corner to park, just following orders even as his teammates in the backseat stalled and doubted. “They could be here any minute,” he warned, to no action from the backseat. “It's your job to keep them distracted, remember?”

“I'll get their attention,” WT said, patting himself down to reaffirm the concealed position of his revolver in its shoulder holster, gearing up to exit the car.

“Here, take this,” Chaos offered WT a collapsible umbrella.

“Is there a secret mechanism in this umbrella or something?” WT asked.

“No, it's raining,” Chaos explained.

“Oh, thank you,” WT grabbed for the umbrella. Chaos grabbed for WT's hand and tilted up his mask for a kiss.

“They won't know what hit them!” Chaos cheered, letting WT go, scrambling to devise some kind of trap from the gear they'd gathered. 

WT opened the umbrella and walked out into the middle of the street outside Diablo's to wait. Now and then the wind pushed the ruined metal door of the club into the interior wall with a scraping thud. It made him look over in alarm each time it happened. After the third or the forth time, he tentatively approached the door, glancing over his shoulder once to confirm that the getaway car was still there. It was dark inside the building. His anxieties put threatening figures to dark, obscured shapes. He moved forward only when lightning flashed outside and left enough of an impression for him to stumble forward, taking several minutes to cross the room. 

The building seemed abandoned but recently inhabited, with a few unweathered cigarette butts and empty bottles left lying around in the corners next to a stool or overturned crate. For the question-mark graffiti on the door to be in the shape it was in, it had to have been done that day, but before the rain. The door leading down to the basement club had also been wrenched open, so Cartman must have gone that way. 

WT approached, and at the top of the stairs his foot kicked aside a spent bullet casing that bounced down the stairs and rang like a bell at Midnight all the way down, colliding into other spent bullet casings that made a decrescendo to the bottom of the steps. From there, darkness swallowed up the bottom of the stairwell, and he could not see or hear anything beyond that. His ears tuned out the din of rain outside and focused for finer detail, picking up the momentum of shifting dust and the sound of his own breathing. There was more to see, further within, wherever the Coon had charged off to, with bold, green graffiti and signs of red conflict, but then there came the sound of a rumbling engine outside, and WT hurried back to the street, tugging the door back into its broken frame behind him. 

An SUV rounded the corner and bared down on WT, rolling to a stop ten yards away. WT kept the lip of the umbrella angled down enough to keep the vehicle's lights out of his eyes, and after a stalemate, the lights clicked down in intensity. WT took a peek up at the SUV and all the usual suspects inside, plus Stan and Kyle, all in their 'hero' personas. WT's breath fogged the inside of his mask, a blank, white stage mask that conformed to his face, obscuring detail, the sort of face you'd find on a mannequin in a deserted shopping mall. What breath escaped the mask fogged up in the cold air. The SUV's side-door slung open, and the hometown heroes sent out their first to bat, SC. His costume was similarly last-minute, with a blue masquerade mask over his eyes.

SC looked at the shitty building he'd been briefed about and noticed the green question mark on the door. “Mysterion is supposed to be in there?” 

“That's what the Coon and Friends came to find out,” WT confirmed.

“What will you do if he's not in there?” SC asked.

“Keep looking,” WT said.

“What if you find him then? Does this stop?” SC asked further, sustaining a passive monotone.

This was the habit they had fallen into in the long course of their on-again, off-again relationship, pretending as if they were strangers on the phone, both too tired to offer more after pretending to be together for too long. 

“We owe a debt to the mayor,” WT answered. “If your group continues to interfere with us you can expect that she will become involved.”

“The mayor is on our side,” SC said, confused. “She kicked the Coon out of town.”

“You're clueless,” WT shook his head. “You really have no idea what's going on here, and it's better that way. You, and the rest of your team, you don't belong in this world in the same way that I don't belong in your world. Whatever grievances we have, let's just leave them be, because holding onto them any longer is going to make things much worse.”

SC bristled up at that, the way he acted like he knew nothing about the evil things that he had done behind his back. “You want us to stand aside while you continue robbing people and starting gang wars?”

“Yeah,” WT confirmed bluntly. “I might have saved myself a few years of working all alone in that shit-hole coffee house if I had started sooner.”

“Tweek,” Craig walked forward and stepped into a punch that shook his head and made his knees wobble.

“Don't call me that,” WT warned, in a relatively relaxed stance aside from his clenched fist. “You ought to know better.”

“Hey!” Mosquito had scrambled out of the SUV when he saw the punch, always the first to respond to first blood, and he rushed at WT, missing a punch, falling into a right-hand counter that flattened his costume's pointy nose and knocked him on his ass. With the two of them backing down against WT, the rest of the team piled out of the SUV, and only Chaos ran up to join WT.

“I thought you were getting a trap ready while I distracted them,” WT said, getting a word aside as they squared up against the others.

“I got distracted,” Chaos admitted, having watched the terse exchange in the street with suspense.

“You're outnumbered, so just give up. Where's that little punk that shot up my car?” Token, who had re-branded from Tupperware to Kevlar thanks to a new sponsor, gave a good flex in his sturdy, plated suit.

“Forget that, where's Kenny?” Toolshed interrupted, much to the Human Kite's chagrin. 

“I'm not telling you anything. I'll take all of you on.” WT stood his ground, lights backing him as Roadkill rounded the corner, engine growling and black metal wailing from the driver-side window.

Token, as Kevlar, responded, moving forward, but WT reacted by quick-drawing the revolver from his shoulder holster on him.

Call-Girl, after much interference from the storm, managed to get a signal for her phone, using it to re-route or otherwise block calls in the immediate area as a safe-measure. Further, she sent a message to her outside help to make an appearance. “That's enough,” she said decisively to the other side. “You've proven that you're siding with the Coon on this.” the situation needed to be deescalated at once. For all she knew, WT was willing to pull the trigger on Kevlar because he happened to be bullet-proof in that suit. “My team is going to stand down.” Despite having said that with believable authority, multiple members of her team protested with simultaneous demands. 

“What about my car!” Kevlar demanded retribution.

“Fuck your car,” Roadkill shouted from his own.

“What about Kenny?” Toolshed pleaded.

“We'll find him on our own, and you can go back to pretending he doesn't exist!” Chaos sneered.

“Like I said, we're standing down. Like it or not, both of our sides defer to the Mayor,” Call-Girl reminded, and the rain applauded her good sense in the absence of any argument. 

None of them were prepared to go against the Mayor. They may be daring vigilantes in their minds, but to the Mayor they were like any of her other pet projects for the town, local interest stories to drum up business, and she had stopped entertaining it since they grew out of being super-teens. 'It's not cute anymore,' she had told them in her office, the day they were ordered to disband. 

Call-Girl read aloud her message from the Mayor, paraphrasing some of the more crass language, “the Friends of the Coon may continue to operate, to find Mysterion and repay their debt. However, you do not have free reign. Only targets sanctioned by the Mayor may be pursued. In addition, the Coon's friends will join the Coon in being banished from South Park.” She looked up a moment and saw no objection, so she continued, “when Mysterion is found, you will bring him to the Mayor. If you do not comply, I will...Kill you.” Call-girl deflated, further paraphrasing the extended threats from the Mayor. “I'm sorry,” she said in sympathy to them. “Now please, lower your weapon,” she bid WT, “I'm going to go and have a word with the Coon in private.” 

Call-girl started to walk for the building, and before WT could even twitch in response, the red dot of a laser-sight was shown on his face. Tracing the light to its origin they could make out Barbrady down the street in civilian clothes, hunkered behind a wall, looking down the sights of a scoped rifle, blinking the laser-sight to announce his position. He'd crept up on them during their confrontation, having tailed Kevlar's group at the behest of the Mayor after the incident at the diner. Call-Girl had detected him following them on one of her devices, but she hadn't told anyone in her own group, intending from the start to stop any kind of fight from breaking out. She could feel the indignation of her own team at her back as she walked away, but she felt nothing. The Mayor had taught her that this was how business was done. Play both sides, make a profit, stay on top. 

Using the flashlight app on her phone, she lit up the ghastly scene inside the warehouse, carefully stepping around the debris in her spotless, hot-pink boots. From the front door, to the basement door, to the door at the bottom of the stairwell, there was a trail of bullet casings, and further in there was blood. The stairwell door itself was jammed and she gave it one good shove after another, before finding that the blockage on the other side had been a man face-down in a red pool of his own making. She stepped carefully around him as she had other debris. There'd been a club here once, just a few months ago, but only dusty bottles at a ripped-up wooden bar and the bare space of the dance floor remained to tell the story. Looking behind the bar, she found the Coon slumped over in a kneeling position and she gasped, at first taking him for some foul beast in the dark ready to lunge at her. He was beaten, bloodied, his costume spoiled by numerous rips and tears. Kneeling close to him she could just make out his wheezing, whistling breaths for air behind his mask. She pulled the mask off to help his breathing, and he was too weak to stop her, though he did resist. 

“He was here,” Cartman swore. 

Call-Girl couldn't be sure. Besides the graffiti there was no sign of Mysterion, just run-of-the-mill drug dealers, at most. Then she found the ornate handle of a small, slender knife jutting from Cartman's belly. 

The Coon winced as his attention returned to it. He recalled trying to pull it out of himself before fainting. This time when he tried again it fell right out, but he slumped over and brayed in pain, unable to speak. 

Call-Girl picked up the knife. An obsidian blade attached to a handle made from a goat's horn, with rubies on either side of the guard and on the pommel. She wiped the blade clean and hid it on her person. She picked up the noise of steps coming down the stairwell, echoing in the dance hall. She had scant time to decide if she could really believe Cartman. If it weren't for the treasure she'd found sticking out of his belly she might have left him out to dry. “The Coon is down here!” she shouted, “Mysterion...He got away!” she added after. That brought everyone running to find them, all asking at once if it was really true, and she lied to their faces, but they believed her because they all wanted to.

Butters had knelt down to touch Cartman, to see that he was alright, and he came away crying, “he's hurt really bad!”

Barbrady stepped forward to help. “Get him up on that pool table,” he said. He spread a body-bag over the pool-table and dug through his first-aid kit, which most of the heroes also had the sense to have on their person. 

Butters, Tweek, and Firkle alone certainly couldn't lift up Cartman from the ground, but they weren't about to ask anyone else, though Stan stepped in to help unbidden, and he grimaced at Kyle for not helping. Barbrady joined in and by their combined effort they got Cartman onto the table, with blood falling to splatter the abandoned cue ball in the side pocket. 

“Barbrady, do you know what you're doing?” Stan asked, watching him hesitate with tools in his hands.

“I've watched people get patched up enough times,” Barbrady reasoned. 

“I've done some taxidermy,” Firkle pitched in, and joined Barbrady's grisly work, with Stan fumbling to procure what tools they needed to suction away blood or stitch up a wound. Tweek and Butters stood close by as well, with Tweek working to keep the area clean and Butters trying to keep Cartman awake, one hand grasping Eric's, the other cupped to his cheek, holding eye contact and whispering to him, though he couldn't get an intelligible reply.

The others, those not so invested in Cartman's recovery, moved away from the table. 

Clyde looked lost, casting an odd-glance at the table. Maybe he did care a little, but he wasn't in their group. “What happened here? I thought we were trying to stop Cartman from robbing some place with like, innocent civilians at stake. This is fucked. I should have listened to Bebe, I could be home with her right now.”

No one really had a response to Clyde directly, but Token said, “this is fucked. Wendy, I feel like there's something you're not telling us. You went completely over my head, and I'm the leader of this team.”

“There wasn't supposed to be a team anymore,” Wendy leveled. “I told Cartman not to do this, but he did it anyway because he thinks it's the only way Kenny will show himself, as Mysterion. I knew none of you wanted to clue the Mayor in to going after them, but as long as we live in South Park, we have to abide by her rules. I did the right thing,” she maintained, though the others were not convinced. The sense that Wendy was hiding something had not left them.

Token knew her well enough at least to reason, “you're cozy with the Mayor now, and you figure while the Coon is active you can use the franchise to your advantage.”

Wendy was surprised, even though she knew well enough that Token was observant. “Well, yes.”

Token shook his head, “I can't handle you pulling this double-agent shit Wendy, I told you that.”

Wendy did not relent. “I'm too capable just to be playing your romantic interest.” There was nowhere left to run, not without cutting loose that one thing she'd kept a secret for so long. “After we disbanded, the Mayor took me aside. While the rest of you were brooding and cursing her, I understood well enough why she did what she did, and she recognized that. I have been prepared so that one day I will take over her position and carry on in her stead.”

Token just started walking away. “We're finished,” he muttered over his shoulder. Clyde ran after him, just as done with this madness and not wanting to miss his ride back home. Craig took a step aside, but couldn't bring himself to leave right away.

Kyle had taken in more of the scene and returned to Wendy. “I can't believe any of what I'm seeing here. That's what my gut tells me. For all I know, Cartman came here to shoot up some gangsters for their stash, he stabbed himself, and you're covering up for him. The only thing I can't figure out is why.”

“Why indeed.” Wendy mused. “I am sorry Kyle, I know you didn't want to be involved in this.”

“Stan is going to be more convicted than ever that we need to find Kenny...” he pulled his hood back, freeing waves of red curls to slowly return to their normal resting position. 

“Help him then. It's always good to support your partner,” Wendy said, embracing the irony of her advice. “I have a place out here in Denver that we can stay at, I'll call a livery service shortly.”

“God,” Kyle groaned to the musty ceiling, “if we had just turned down that grant money from the Mayor, we'd still be home right now...” Wiping down a bar stool with his cape, he took a seat to wait. “Honestly, fuck dolphins and fuck whales.” 

Wendy looked up from her phone to notice Craig standing before her, quite awkwardly. “I told Cartman that if his match-making with you and Tweek ending up hurting you I'd cut his balls off with a rusty coffee-can lid. Do you want me to go ahead and do that now while he's under the knife?”

Craig made a brave face. “I'm not hurt.”

“Maybe you're like me then,” Wendy suggested hearteningly.

“No,” Craig decided. “You're more like Tweek.” Craig headed upstairs after all, hoping Token was still there to take him home. 

Wendy joined Kyle at the bar, producing a flask from her purse, sparing a glance at the 'operating theater' close-by. She offered the flask to Kyle. “I was hoping to take you someplace nicer to drink. I missed you and Stan.”

Kyle took a drink. “You can just say you missed Stan. I don't really care, Wendy.”

“I love you and Stan,” Wendy re-iterated, “and by that I mean I love Stan, and I'm glad he's with someone that loves him back.”

Kyle took another drink and passed the flask back. He bit his tongue a moment, but then said, “if this whole situation, you and Token, or Craig and Tweek aren't enough proof for you, it behooves me to remind you that you cannot keep Cartman from fucking things up, period.” He turned in his seat toward Wendy, saying further with certainty, and without humor, “he is a human fuck-up and you are going to regret being associated with him.” 

“I know that,” Wendy said, “but we're all here to find Kenny.”

Kyle scoffed at that. “Well, if I'm to believe you, you already found him, as Mysterion.”

“Yes, and?”

“You don't remember Mysterion like I do. If any one of us needed to keep the mask off for good it was Kenny. Mysterion was dark, and everything he said under that cowl, he believed in it. He's immortal, he's cursed, he's possessed- all of it. Finding Mysterion is going to make more problems than it solves. If you love Stan and me, help me convince him to walk away from all of this.”

“I would if I could. I'm sorry. I was never able to reason with his emotions.”

Kyle motioned to Wendy to pass the flask again for a third drink, vodka stinging and drying the inside of his mouth. He was never able to reason with Stan's emotions either. He wanted to talk it over more with Wendy, but her eyes were glued to her phones.

“Sorry, I have to take this,” Wendy excused herself to answer a call from Bebe, though it was strategically timed to avoid Stan, who came to the bar in a harried state to ask why she and Kyle weren't helping. 

“What can I do?” Kyle asked rhetorically.

Stan had felt queasy enough watching over the bloody work at the pool table, but when he smelled Wendy's brand of vodka from Kyle it made his stomach roll over. “I don't know, but he's stopped responding to us, can you try, please?”

Kyle hurriedly screwed the cap of the flask back on with a flash of guilt and rose off the creaking bar stool to go and join the others around Cartman. They looked at Kyle expectantly. Kyle wondered if this wasn't at least a small part of why Cartman did this, on the off-chance it would lead to everyone circled around, with their full attention on him; as if he'd missed his cue for a tragic death-scene and was just trying to recreate it. 

“Hey.” Kyle tried. No response. He leaned down closer to Cartman's ear. “Wake up, Fatass.” 

Cartman's eyes opened up a sliver, flickering open and close. He moved his lips but all his consonants came out voiceless as he tried to say “fuck you, Kyle.”

“Do me a favor and die already,” Kyle whispered closely, to keep anyone else from hearing. If anyone had heard him he'd have blamed it on the vodka. Cartman couldn't muster a reply.

“How'd I know that would work?” Stan shared a wry smile around the table. Kyle tugged on his arm for a word in private, intent on separating themselves from the Coon and Friends, and so they left the table. Barbrady seemed satisfied with his work. He just had to clean up the rest of the scene to cover for the Coon, and so he set to it, leaving the table to get started. Butters and Tweek left the table as well, with Butters talking about rigging together something to help get Cartman out of the basement, but mostly they needed a break from the anxiety of looking at their friend in such a state.

Firkle lingered as the others walked away from Cartman, deep in thought. He had learned a great deal about blood, about wounds, and about knives. To his knowledge, Cartman's wound was made by an asymmetrical dagger with a wave-like blade, an Indonesian Kris, perhaps. The smoothness of entry hinted that it was very sharp, and the fresh flow of Cartman's blood when they found him suggested it had been removed just before they got there. So where had it gone? The murmurs of the private talks of others irritated him, so he took out his headphones. His phone was full of unanswered texts from his roommates, which he responded to with a single photo of the empty, ruined dance hall. Back when the Goths weren't working all the time, they could take the weekends to explore dead places like this. He figured they'd understand. However, they replied with more concern, and so he continued to ignore them, inspecting and admiring Cartman's dressed wounds further with morbid curiosity. 

Back down the hall near the stairwell, Barbrady whistled as he worked, unfurling more police-issued body bags for the trio of bodies he had found; the one that had jammed the door, and two others in a side room behind a table they'd flipped over for cover. He recognized the cuts of their suits and the make of their guns, but he didn't recognize their tattoos, which were most useful in identifying gang affiliation. Oh well, move along, nothing to see here, that was his motto. As a policeman, he did find it interesting how little notice the young heroes had given the dead thug in the hall. Must be those violent movies they grew up on, he reasoned. The heroes were always killing swaths of nameless henchmen. He heard the clack of heeled boots behind him but didn't turn to look, and so Wendy called to him, “Officer Barbrady?”

“Good evening Wendy, how do you do?” Barbrady dragged each of the three bags to the bottom of the stairwell in turn. He'd gotten in better shape over the past few years as the Mayor patronized him, getting him the money he needed to pay the bills and keep eating healthy, encouraging him to keep his body in good condition. After all those bills, his wife and his dog still died while in care, and he was left in debt. All that he had left in his routine was to continue following McDaniel's orders. His vision was slowly degrading, as was his hearing in his right ear, but his natural build complemented the work he'd put in, and his core strength was above average for his age. If he had his way he'd work on the force until he died, no matter what dirty work he was made to do. If he lived long enough he might see Wendy become his boss, and so he treated her with the most respect out of any of the kids in capes. Of course there were those above him at the station that he would continue to defer to, but the Mayor was the de-facto chief in the shadows, and he knew that Wendy intended to continue that tradition because it's what South Park needed to get by.

“Things have gotten complicated,” Wendy said. “I'm hoping that tonight put them off heroics, but this could turn into Coon and Friends versus the Freedom Pals again.”

Barbrady grunted with the strain of lifting a body over his shoulder, gripping the rail of the stairwell tightly to brace his way upstairs. “The Mayor wants you to keep them in line, both sides. You can manage that, can't you?” 

“Yes,” Wendy said stiffly, watching Barbrady go. Truthfully, she didn't know if she could since she'd left her group to go solo, but she had to meet the Mayor's expectations. At the least, she still had an in with Bebe, who had never bought into the hero shtick to begin with. If she put in the right word with her then Clyde would be out, and the others ought to follow suit. She climbed the stairs after Barbrady to find reception for her phone. 

At the top of the stairs, Barbrady was catching his breath; the purposefully deep and even breaths of an older man pushing himself. He had his hands on his knees and his hat had tipped forward, askew. As sweat dripped down the back of his neck, individual beads were diverted in their paths by sparse grey hairs. Wendy walked past, looking at her phone in such a way that he knew meant she was only pretending not to pay attention to him. It was hard for him to understand, but he figured that was a young person's way of being respectful to his independence. Someone from his own generation might have stopped to ask if he was alright, but it would have made him all the more aware of how he must look, old and weary as he was. Then again, maybe Wendy didn't care at all, and the old way of making token gestures was better, because without them there was only uncertainty.

Barbrady's back popped as he straightened himself back up, and as he tipped his hat back into place he noticed that Wendy had at least glanced at him, and that was enough of a show of concern for him, so he pushed himself to go back downstairs and continue his work. 

“You should get some help with that,” Wendy called after him, but Barbrady had his bad ear toward her so he didn’t hear it. She watched him go until she heard Bebe pick up on the other end of the phone.

“Wendy, what in the hell is going on over there?” Bebe said.

Wendy stalled, but the hell going on was too far-reaching to explain. “Lover’s quarrels?” 

“Oh my god, you’ve broken up with Token,” Bebe gasped, jumping to predict the next plot point like when she was at the movies with Clyde. 

“Yes,” Wendy said, because giving Bebe the satisfaction of knowing she was right was what she lived for. “Any other guesses?”

Bebe mulled it over, ignoring Clyde’s texts to avoid spoilers. “You’re not hooking up with Cartman, are you?”

“No,” Wendy said forcefully.

Bebe clicked her tongue. “If you were you wouldn’t admit it, so now I don’t know what to think.” 

“Has Clyde told you anything?” Wendy asked.

“Hold on, let me check his texts.” Bebe pulled her face away from her phone. She was lounging at Token’s estate since she’d been dropped off after the incident at the diner. She had changed into pajamas and settled down in the movie room to try watching one of those movies Clyde kept telling her to watch, so the next time he asked would be the last. It sounded like another one of those weird lo-fi movies he liked, and it was, but she was liking this one well enough to pause it while she used the phone.

Clyde had sent her a picture of him with a bloody nose. He had texted “you should see the other guy!” even though the fight had been completely one-sided. The two of them were both a little too into bloody noses and so they sent a few flirty texts and suggestive emojis back and forth before Bebe got back on track. 

“What happened?” Bebe texted Clyde. “Why did Wendy break up with Token?”

Clyde was in the back of the SUV as Token drove and Craig sat in the passenger-seat. He looked up at the two of them, but felt disconnected to them in their stoic silence because they were both still reeling from being broken up with and he was still super happy with Bebe. He texted back, “Creative differences? I didn’t really understand what was going on.” Then he launched into a furious marathon of texting to explain his side of the story. 

“After the shit at the diner, Wendy told us where we could find Cartman, and that he was going around as the Coon again, so we had to put on our costumes too to deal with him, but instead of being alone he had a whole crew of henchmen, and I took out like a dozen, and then Tweek came out looking like Micheal Myers, and I think he was on something because he was crazy strong and he punched out Craig, and he said didn’t care about Craig anymore because Craig never understood his tragic backstory, and I’d have taken him out but he pulled a gun on us, then he pistol-whipped me and pointed the gun at Token, but then Barbrady showed up with one of those big, scoped rifles the SWAT team gets, so then basically everyone had to back off. Wendy goes in ahead of us and when we get down there, there’s even more bodies of henchmen and Kenny was there as Mysterion, only he wasn’t there he got away, and also he stabbed Cartman, so you would think that would mean they’re not on the same side anymore, but Cartman and Kenny are so crazy that Kyle and a couple other people think it’s all a ruse, only I don’t know what for, that sounds too crazy even for them lol.”

“Holy shit wtf!! Lol” Bebe texted back, “hold on I gotta get the scoop from Wendy.”

Wendy picked up promptly as Bebe called back. She had walked out and stepped to the side as Butters and Tweek came through after Barbrady, each carrying a bodybag to the Officer’s cruiser. “I’m guessing that Clyde filled you in?”

“Yeah, so Butters and Tweek are hooking up now?” Bebe asked.

“Uh, yeah,” Wendy confirmed, not expecting for that to be her first question.

Bebe followed with another pressing concern. “Oh my god, Stan and Kyle aren’t going to break up are they?” 

Wendy sighed. “It is a very high stress situation, things are tense, but they haven’t broken up, and I’m doing what I can to help them.” With that out of the way, she said what she meant to in the first place. “Bebe, you should tell Clyde not to get involved with this further.”

“For sure,” Bebe acquiesced at once. “I think all of you took this cape stuff way too far...I thought it was supposed to just be for fun. I mean, do you even know how Clyde came up with ‘The Mosquito’?”

“I don’t know, it’s like Spiderman?” Wendy never got it.

“Maybe you’re better off not knowing…” Bebe sent, punctuated with a side-eyes smiling face emoji. The truth was that was her nickname for him because he was a freak that didn’t mind eating her out while she was on her period.

“I have to go. Try to put Craig and Token off the heroics too, if you can. I’ll be in Denver for awhile.” Wendy replied for the last time and put her phone away. Everyone else in the abandoned building had congregated at the top and bottom of the stairs to plan how to get Cartman out. 

With the cramped dimensions of the corkscrewing staircase there was no easy way to go about it. Among their overlapping voices no one heard it the first few times, until Cartman croaked it out loud enough. “Just leave me here.”

“You heard him,” Kyle scoffed, more than ready to let Cartman have his way for once.

“We can go and grab some things to make it more comfortable down here, until he’s well enough to stand on his own,” Butters offered. “If it doesn’t get better we’ll call Dr. Mephesto.”

The group stayed quiet a bit longer, until it was clear there were no better alternatives besides risking re-opening Cartman’s wounds. It was the second time in less than a week that he’d been put down and stitched together like this, and his condition was fragile.

Firkle offered his keys to Tweek, who he could tell was an overly-cautious driver, suggesting, “I’ll stay here to keep an eye on him.” 

The rest of the group began to filter out after that, with Barbrady being the last out, doing a final inspection before leaving Firkle and Cartman in the abandoned dance hall, with only a pair of heavy-duty flashlights lighting up the ceiling, stowed in the pockets of the pool table after they’d been used to illuminate the work of the amateur surgeons. 

Tweek and Butters drove off to the apartment, Barbrady drove off toward South Park, and that left just Wendy, Stan, and Kyle lingering outside. They each realized they didn’t have a ride. It was embarrassing, given their attire, but Wendy called for a Lyft.

“Should we really leave them down there?” Stan asked. 

Kyle bit his tongue, which he found himself doing a lot lately. On one hand, he wanted to stay out of this. 99% of him wanted to stay out of this. On the other hand, his ‘suspect Cartman’ senses were screaming that somehow, someway, being left half-dead in a basement was to Cartman’s advantage, and they shouldn’t take their collective eyes off of him in case Kenny came back while they were away. “Do you remember when Cartman left me to die on an operating table- when he could have donated one of his kidneys to me, and he didn’t?”

“He would have! He just...Wanted money for it, that’s all,” Stan trailed off.

“What he would have done was let me die because I didn’t give him enough!” Kyle hissed, “he’s evil!”

“I don’t believe in that kind of evil, Kyle. He could get better..” Stan pleaded.

Kyle didn’t look at all convinced. “He’s being looked after. It’s not our concern.” He shot Wendy a familiar glare that screamed ‘agree with me or else!’

“Kyle is right,” Wendy told Stan gently. “We’re not Cartman’s support group, and for good reason.” The three of them stood a bit closer together by the door. “Kenny...He’ll come on his own time. That’s how it always was back then, wasn’t it?”

That much was true, Kenny would disappear for long stretches of time, but he’d come back, and to anyone that said ‘we thought you died’ he’d say ‘I can’t die.’ It became his catch-phrase. He’d say it before tearing off on his motorcycle, or during a natural disaster, or after drinking one too many- whenever he could, to make sure no one forgot. Sometimes it sounded off when he said it. Less like a line from a sit-com and more like a line from a monster movie. Whenever Stan thought of it, he’d feel a chill go up his back to the top of his neck. His tense silence led Kyle and Wendy to figure he was ready to stop arguing the point.

“Maybe we could talk about what that meant to you, somewhere a bit warmer?” Wendy offered, in one of her rare and tender emotional appeals.

“Uh, sure,” Stan muttered. It was moments like that which used to make Stan’s heart flutter, until he remembered how rarely moments like that came with Wendy. 

When the Lyft finally came along, everyone was quiet in the backseat, though the driver tried to initiate some conversation about the weather and their costumes. Wendy confirmed her destination with her phone and hovered her finger over the star ratings, granting the driver five stars for catching the hint that his passengers wanted to ride in silence. 

Stan was grateful that Wendy or Kyle could pull off cold gestures like that. If it were just him alone, he’d have entertained some chatter, even though he didn’t want to. With the silence afforded to him, he thought more about what he wanted from all of this. He’d learned well enough over the years that he needed a partner that would validate his emotions often. Things with Kyle had been just that, really great, at least until recently when they started fighting over Kenny. Kyle didn’t like to be told he didn’t understand anything, but Kyle didn’t understand how the upbringing of their friends had really affected them. Stan, like them, had been abused by his own family, and complicit in their frequent crimes. His grandfather dealt in opiates, his father was an alcoholic, his older sister beat him without mercy, and his mother took enough opiates and drank enough wine to ignore all of it. 

The difference was clear every holiday season. Kyle’s parents were sort of weird, and they were somewhat infamous around town for having an ‘experimental’ sex life, but overall they were good, especially to their kids. He never had to keep his guard up at their house, which is why he’d slept over as often as he could. If it hadn’t turned out that he loved Kyle romantically, he would have loved him as a brother, more deeply than his own blood. It broke his heart, but he didn’t feel the same way with Kenny, and he couldn’t divide his heart any further than sharing it with one other, Kyle. 

Stan would have accepted Kenny as a brother, but Kenny wouldn’t accept that. It was difficult for him to understand, because Kenny had said that he’d loved him and wanted to be with him, but Kenny had also kept himself from getting too close. He supposed it was because, as bad as his home life was, Kenny’s was worse, and Stan wouldn’t understand in the same way that Kyle didn’t understand. 

All of that said, Stan wanted to know that Kenny was alright. He wanted to hear him say it again. ‘I can’t die.’ With a start, he noticed that the glove on his right hand was being pulled off by Kyle, who wanted to hold his hand. His fingers were long, the tone was pale, the knuckles were reddened and the outermost flesh was dry enough to start flaking, looking like the molting of a pink lizard. 

Stan held his hand gently. Stan’s fingers were thick, the tone was more tanned, and his knuckles had black hairs over them. Stan took in more details in glimpses as they passed the beacon lights of street lamps. Orange light, blue shadows. Seeing in the light and feeling in the dark. He could feel with his fingers that Kyle had pushed back his cuticles recently, and there was still scar tissue along the underside of his index finger from when he’d slipped with a kitchen knife; a gruesome perpendicular cut that stopped just short of cleaving through the bone and taking off a finger. Observing the world in its minutiae like this helped to calm him. He noticed Kyle relaxing too, though their cozy ‘world for two’ atmosphere was somewhat impacted by the lyft driver, and by Wendy lighting up the backseat with her phone, fretfully tapping away to try and contain the fires of the world that others would leave to burn.

Wendy was texting with Bebe again, and had just gotten a reply. 

“Damn, Token and Craig are pissed,” eyebrows-raised, open-mouthed emojii.

“What do you think they’ll do?” Wendy texted back.

“They were headed for the armory…” Bebe trailed, x-mouth emoji.

“What’s Clyde doing?” Wendy checked.

“Just being Clyde.” winky face. “I tried cheering everyone up with some burritos on delivery, but that only worked on him. I told him I don’t want him doing this cape stuff, and he’s agreed not to get involved. Clyde will try to talk with them more after they’ve had some time...What are you doing?”

“Stan and Kyle are sleeping over.”

“Ooh-la-la,” sideways-looking eyes emoji.

“I’ll be sleeping on the couch.” humorless emoji. “The last thing I need to hear is Kyle complaining about his back all weekend, so I’m letting them have the bed. Call me in the morning.” Thinking about it more, Wendy realized she hadn’t cleaned her place in ages. It wasn’t at all like her, but since she’d been spending so little time there it had been a guilty pleasure of hers to leave her bed unmade, her clothes on the ground, mail on the tables, shoes in the hall, and so on. 

Now it all caught up with her, and she would be burning with embarrassment, imagining how smug Kyle would feel, how he’d be taken with the illusion that he was better at keeping house than her, when really he was dreadful at it. She’d been to their house before, and even if Kyle put on a show of putting on an apron, or gloves, or a bandana, there would still be swaths of dust in hard to reach places and junk hastily stuffed into hall closets. Those were the thoughts that occupied her during the drive. She’d pushed the matter of Cartman and his problems out of her head completely, though she had secretly left a monitoring device in that basement, just in case.

Further on the matter of inner thoughts during the drive, a great deal of more exposition could be made describing what thoughts consumed Kyle at the time, but to summarize he was trying to think of the least offensive method of having sex with Stan at Wendy’s apartment.

Meanwhile, back at that abandoned building, Wendy’s monitoring device, taped under the bar near the pool table, picked up winces of pain amidst crackling static. 

Firkle was hovering over Cartman, looking at those puffy, red stitches in his pale, fatty underbelly. He touched his fingertips around them, ignoring Cartman’s whines of irritation at his prodding. “You really saw him?” Firkle asked. 

“Yes, will you fucking stop that?” Cartman squawked.

“Why doesn’t he come now?” Firkle sat up on the pool table, drumming his painted fingernails around the blood-stained cue ball he’d picked up.

“Maybe he’s busy.” Cartman stared up at the ceiling, feeling like he’d tear something if he moved even the muscles in his eyes to glance elsewhere.

Firkle kicked his feet, swinging them back and forth over and under the edge of the table. He rolled the heavy ball around in his hand and asked, “would he come if I tried to kill you?”

A disquieting silence burned between them, like a cigarette half-consumed with ash that had not fallen. “He’s not my guardian angel,” Cartman said, straining to keep his eyes on Firkle. He really looked like he meant to do it; just bash his head in with that cue ball for wasting his time and getting his hopes up. 

Firkle dropped the ball back down to the table and rolled it across the ruined, red felt cover with his palm. “I believe you,” he trailed off. “But don’t keep me waiting much longer.” 

Firkle rose from the pool table and went to retrieve the mask of the Coon, which had been left on the dusty floor by the bar. He crouched down to pick it up. He turned it in his hands, and peered through the eye-holes. He sensed some kind of anima there, some connection to Mysterion, but he couldn't command it on his own. To see the secrets he was after, he'd need Cartman after all. Even so, while he crouched and looked through the mask, a secret was revealed to him: the recording device strapped under the bar. He removed it and destroyed it, thus ending Wendy's account for what happened next in that basement.

Having just arrived at her apartment, Wendy let her guests inside, intentionally not turning on the lights to obscure its disorderly condition. She made them stand outside her bedroom, just long enough to bundle some of her more private and intimate effects into the bottom of her clothes hamper, and moved on to the master bath as she summoned them inside, deaf to their 'thank yous' and small-talk as she buzzed about, making things more presentable. She saw herself in the mirror in her costume and suddenly felt very tired, very out of place. She hung up the hand towel she used to wipe down the counter and changed the liner in the garbage bin before she decided she'd done enough, carrying out the small garbage bag with her as she went. “Good night,” she said over her shoulder.

She left her guests to whisper between themselves as she tossed the garbage in the larger bin out in the kitchen. Having accomplished that, her hero persona demanded that she take off her costume before she heaped more disgrace on it. She'd never worn it in her apartment, and had never done housekeeping in it either. She undressed in the living room to change into yoga pants and a breast cancer awareness t-shirt that had both been shunted out of her main bedroom closet and into the hallway closet for a lack of space.   
She plugged in her phone and spread out on the couch with a purple quilt. She tried closing her eyes, turning on her left and right, and breathing deeply, but she couldn't sleep. She took in the details of her living space, which she hadn't been in for some time.   
In front of her white couch there was a fluffy, white rug, spread out before an electric heating unit dressed up like a fake fireplace, complete with fake logs of wood. Above the heater was her TV, mounted to the wall, with dangling wires fastened flush to the wall. Her family had gone without cable television growing up, and she did the same as an adult, but if Bebe were to visit they could use her Apple TV or watch a DVD. In that time before she moved in with Token officially, she would stay at her apartment on odd-days, work-days, or over the weekend. The rent was high, and while she was out she would sub-let or host with AirBnB, but it was still an unnecessary expenditure. Even so, she figured she'd need it eventually, and here it was for her after all. Token had always taken it a bit personally that she kept this option open. She couldn't blame him, but she couldn't give up that out for his feelings either. What kind of partner was Wendy holding out for?

“Look Wendy,” a young Cartman pointed to the snowman he'd made. “It's your ideal man,” he snickered alongside Kenny. “Cut it out, Cartman,” Stan grumbled ineffectually, leading the fatass to mock them further. “He's got a carrot nose, so you know he's a vegan. He doesn't have any coal buttons, so you know he cares about the environment. To top it off, he's just as cold as you are, and when you get bored of him you can just leave him to melt, no hard feelings.”

Wendy tossed about on the couch in irritation as her restless mind dragged her through a slew of childhood memories. The people she had hurt, the people she had been hurt by. The dreams she'd had, lost or discarded along the way. 

 

Without even thinking about it, she had picked up her phone off the side-table next to the couch. You're off-duty, she told herself. There was no reason or justification to use the powers of her phone to, for example, eavesdrop on an ex just to distract herself. Which ex? It was a bad idea, whoever she chose. 

Ultimately, she didn't need to use it to know what Stan was up to, as the tremor of some movement came from her bedroom.

“You have to be fucking kidding me,” Wendy groaned over a separate groan from the bedroom. She took her phone off the charger, grabbed her purse off the floor, and got off the couch, crossing the floor and parting the blinds enough to reach the handle of the sliding glass door, escaping outside onto the balcony- a concrete protrusion fenced by black metal frames holding glass panes, and covered by a blue canopy dripping rain at the edges. 

Out on the balcony, there were a pair of soggy folding chairs and a green plastic table. On the table, there was a white porcelain ashtray with a silhouette of Bermuda painted on it, which Bebe had bought at a thrift store and left at Wendy's apartment. Bebe had even left her pack of Newports there on the table next to the ashtray. They had both stopped smoking since that time. The plastic wrap was still half-on, and there were still several cigarettes inside. Wendy sat on one of the soggy chairs and took a cigarette from the abandoned pack. She examined it closely, finding it weathered but not unsmokable. 

However, the matchbook left on the table was unusable, left in a warped spot of the plastic table that had pooled with water and soaked them through. Wendy craned over awkwardly to look all around and under the table, then the chairs, but didn't find anything else to use. 

“Need a light, Ma'am?” 

Wendy jumped at the voice, a prim, British lilt. Given that they were many, many floors up off the ground, it was unexpected, unnerving. She looked up at the speaker, a young man in a red suit with a bowtie, his blonde hair in an old-fashioned page style, standing on top of the thin, metal railing of the balcony. Wendy asked, still short of breath, “Who are you?”

He frowned at her for a moment, as if she ought to know, but then he was back to smiling cordially. “Call me Pip.”

“What are you doing here?” Wendy asked.

“My apologies,” Pip bowed with one arm folded behind his back and the other folded in front. He explained, “you have something that doesn’t belong to you.”

At first, Wendy didn't know what he could be referring to, but as Pip held his hand out expectantly and waited, she guessed that it must be the strange knife she'd found stabbed into Cartman. She was hesitant to do it, but felt all the same that she was better off doing so. She retrieved it from her purse and handed it over.

“Thank you for your cooperation.” Pip stepped down from the railing, reaching into his jacket and pulling out a thick stack of hundred-dollar bills, as well as a gold-plated flip-lighter. The term 'blood money' came to mind, and the goods weighed heavily in Wendy's hand as she took them in exchange for the esoteric blade, putting them into her purse.

With the trade complete, and the knife stashed in his jacket, Pip got back up onto the railing of the balcony, turning around to face Wendy.

“Ta-ta!” he waved cheerily and then fell backwards, plummeting to the street below. 

Wendy rushed to the balcony, gripping it tightly. She could do nothing but watch him fall, all the way down, reaching such a velocity that his body bounced as it hit the ground, and he was surely dead on impact. Wendy dropped to her knees in a daze, but she fought through it and rushed to her phone to call the police.

“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”

Wendy hadn’t the foggiest idea what the emergency was, even as her heart slammed against her rib-cage with adrenaline. She stood up, looked around. A cold wind blew past, brushing aside her hair and flapping the edges of the canopy overhead. There was no intruder, no fire, but something was terribly wrong with the world and it filled her with dread. She stammered into the phone, “I...”

“Ma’am? Is there an emergency?”

Ma’am, who called her ma’am? She didn't like it, it made her stomach churn. If something so terrible had happened why couldn’t she remember it? She looked over the railing, but it made her stomach pitch all the more intensely and she quickly backed away. There was nothing below but wet asphalt and parked cars. What had she expected to see?

“Ma’am? Hello?”

“I'm sorry.” Wendy hung up and her knees gave out, dropping her back into her chair, a hand clutched to her chest. 

With trembling fingers, she dug through her purse, recoiling at the unfamiliar items inside. She took out the cash and the lighter. Where had these come from? She remembered Cartman in that abandoned basement. He'd paid her off to say that she'd seen Mysterion. Why had she agreed to that? 

She dropped the money back into her purse and used the lighter to ignite her cigarette, closing her eyes through the first deep draw of tempering smoke. She breathed the cancer-causing smoke in and out, with ash dusting over her lap as she slowly tamped down the panic that had overtaken her. 

Holding the lighter in her right hand, her thumb snapped the flip-top open and close. She could feel some irregular texture on her palm from the faceplate of the lighter, and she turned it over in her hand to see an engraving, one letter, “D”.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think about this fic all the time. If you're reading it, please leave a comment, any thoughts you have to share. I wouldn't have come this far without them. Thanks.


End file.
